Seismic analysis of Roller Compacted Concrete (RCC) dams considering effect of viscous boundary conditions

This study presents comparation of fixed and viscos boundary condition effects on three-dimensional earthquake response and performance of a RCC dam considering linear and non-linear response. For this purpose, Cine RCC dam constructed in Aydin, Turkey, is selected in applications. The Drucker-Prager material model is considered for concrete and foundation rock in the nonlinear time-history analyses. Besides, hydrodynamic effect was considered in linear and non-linear dynamic analyses for both conditions. The hydrodynamic pressure of the reservoir water is modeled with the fluid finite elements based on the Lagrangian approach. The contact-target element pairs were used to model the dam-foundation-reservoir interaction system. The interface between dam and foundation is modeled with welded contact for both fixed and viscos boundary conditions. The displacements and principle stress components obtained from the linear and non-linear analyses are compared each other for empty and full reservoir cases. Seismic performance analyses considering demand-capacity ratio criteria were also performed for each case. According to numerical analyses, the total displacements and besides seismic performance of the dam increase by the effect of the viscous boundary conditions. Besides, hydrodynamic pressure obviously decreases the performance of the dam.