Stability Assessment of Concrete Gravity Dams Using Fracture Mechanics Criteria; Case Study Zavin Dam

All concrete dams suffer from cracking which is caused by various factors such as construction, poorcuring, volume changing in mass concrete and load application. These cracks may propagate andleading to significant change in the failure resistance of dam.Recently, fracture mechanics has been advocated in papers, as an alternative means to assess damsafety. In this study, linear elastic fracture mechanics concepts were applied to assess the crack stability inZAVIN Concrete Gravity Dam that is subjected to five various loading conditions in full and emptyreservoir.The two dimensional maximum section of ZAVIN Dam was modeled using FRANC2D software, which isspecially prepared for fracture mechanics analysis. A finite element linear elastic fracture mechanicsanalysis in plain strain condition was used to determine the stress intensity factor at different crackpositions and maximum circumferential stress to compute crack stability and kinking angle of cracks ateach step of crack propagations in the dam body. The results of this study would be useful to preventpossible instability of ZAVIN and other concrete gravity dams

Keywords:

Concrete Dam , Crack Propagation , Fracture Mechanics , Stress Intensity Factor