Influence of Cohesive Strength in Probabilistic Sliding Stability Reassessment of Concrete Dams

For concrete dams, cohesive strength often constitutes a significant share of the overall shear strength of partially bonded concrete-rock interfaces. However, cohesive strength is also associated with great uncertainties that may have a significant impact on the assessed stability of the analyzed structure. In this paper, the merits of including cohesion are evaluated using a probability-based approach to analyze the sliding stability of an existing concrete gravity dam. The shear strength properties of the interface are inferred from a limited number of site-specific tests and previous knowledge from similar structures using Bayesian updating. The study shows that the potential gain from cohesive strength is strongly related to the involved uncertainties and identifies the bonding percentage and basic friction angle as the most influential parameters. The importance of testing, both with regard to the specific project and for future projects, is also highlighted.