Confining pressure effect on dynamic response of high rockfill dam

Studies show that the dynamic properties of rockfill are strongly dependent on the confining pressure. Therefore, confining pressure effect has become a very important factor in the seismic analysis of high rockfill dam. The relationships of dynamic shear modulus versus dynamic shear strain and damping ratio versus dynamic shear strain had been improved to a certain degree on the basic of widely used Hardin-Drnevich constitutive model in this paper. Then a new model that could consider confining pressure effect has been established. Regression analysis was carried out of the dynamic triaxial experimental data of the damming materials in the Changheba hydropower station of Sichun Province, China. The results show that, the new model can fit the test data well under various confining pressures. A corresponding computational procedure was compiled and applied in the dynamic response analysis of the Changheba Dam. Comparing the calculation results between the new constitutive model and the ordinary Hardin-Drnevich model, it can be seen that the result is conservative to some extent without considering confining pressure effect. © Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010.