Numerical investigation of damage types through concrete dam by multi-laminate model upon instrumentation data

In maintenance of concrete made dam, damages and their type’s outcome internally after strong earthquake are generally judged upon engineering experience and guess which mostly may be not logical and even not true. A mesoscale multi-laminate based damage model has been developed and employed to simulate the location, orientation and type of internal damages due to any change at boundaries such as earthquake. The proposed model can rationally describe the semi-macroscopic behavior of quasi-brittle materials, and especially concrete, under the effects of any change sensed by overall instrumentation data outcome with regards to the pre-existing values before damage. The capability of proposed model was investigated through modeling the interaction of meso-scale heterogeneities and formulating the damage constitutive law governing on predefined sampling planes interactions. Accordingly, any compressive/tensile/shearing on plane conditions created upon experimental tests (under both quasi-static and dynamic conditions) can be numerically simulated. The analysis will include discussion of failure/post failure pattern as well as fragment distribution. The capability of proposed model in crack progression and fragmentation is investigated through the analysis of any plain and reinforced concrete dam to show the ideal damages across dam body.

Keywords:

instrumentation data analysis , internal damage , crack type , damage orientation