Finite Element Analysis Of Bottom Joint Of The Arch Dam

With the continuous development of water resources, Arch dam has strong earthquake and the overloading of capacity, At the same time, it has a small amount of project investment and the little environmental impaction. so arch dam gets to rapid development. However, due to strong concrete temperature load and the role of water pressure, the dam heel site easily is pulled cracked, sometimes impermeable curtain is pulled off to cause dam foundation seepage and impact dams safety. In order to reduce the dam heel stress, bottom joint can be set up at dam heel site to release dam heel stress.Setting the bottom joints at dam heel site and making too much stress at dam heel site to be released is an effective measures to avoid dam heel creaked naturally to impact a dam security. because we have some failed and the lessons of successful examples by setting bottom joints at a dam heel site, we will still have some worries to setting bottom joints of a dam heel. Therefore, after setting up bottom joint analyzing a dam stress and dispacement is necessary. study results can provide references for arch dam's design and construction. So the paper is to shimenkan arch dam as a example and simulate and analysis 5m deep bottom joint of shimenkan arch dam with contacting non-linear analysis method and analysis of its contact surface stability, sometimes we analysis the bottom joints top site stability with Drucker-Prage yield criteria.The results showed :after shimenkan arch dam is set a 5m deep bottom joint, the stress at site the dam heel reduce significantly, the stress zone reduces at arch beam crown section of up stream ,the stress reduces at upper two abutment site of the bottom joint, at the same time, the bottom joint top site is in a stable state, which will reach the purpose of setting bottom joints.