PFC numerical simulation of particle breakage of the clay core rock-fill dam

Survey results show that the particle breakage plays an important role to the deformation of the dam, but it's difficult to research the influence of particle breakage because of the limitation of calculation method and the calculation efficiency. In this paper, a new way of modeling the Clay Core Rock-fill Dam (CCRD) is presented. Based upon the principle of particle flow code-PFC, it is possible to model the phenomenon of rock-fill breakages under earthquake in a simple way, and the particle breakage due to the dam's self weight, the filling of the reservoir are also researched. The dam's self weight leads to 4.7% breakages rate and 0.9% additional broken blocks occurred during the impounding. Further more, 12.4% breakage rate occurred after earthquake. The breakages mainly occur at the bottom and the downstream beside the core-wall. The reason of the particle breakage, the distribution of the contact force and the broken zone can be obtained accurately by this research. The results of the numerical simulation provide a practical basis to quantitatively analyze the rock-fill breakage of rock-fill dam using PFC, and also provide a new way to explain and analyze the particle breakage from the perspective of micro mechanism.