Cracking Causes And Numerical Analysis Of High Concrete Gravity Dams

Cracks commonly found in concrete gravity structure, seriously affecting their function, durability and service life, and even lead to overall failure. Cracking of concrete dams is one of the major failure modes. Studying of the formation and development of cracks has great significance of the security and stability of concrete dams. This paper studies the causes of cracks in concrete gravity dam, combined with engineering example, to study the dam cracking under the conditions of different load combinations. The main contents are as follows:First, introduce the theoretical basis for crack analysis of concrete structures, including materials constitutive and fracture models. Second, analysis the causes of cracks in concrete dams, and combined with fault tree analysis methods, the fault tree model of cracking of concrete dams is establishment. Then, the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method is used to analysis the influence degree of the risk factors, and the influencing orders of the risk factors are obtained. Last, take the Longtan high RCC gravity dam for example, take the water load, temperature load and seismic load as risk factors to analysis their impacts of dam cracking under different load combinations of 10 kinds of operating conditions.The most dangerous load combination is obtained in this study, and the conclusions will be an effective guidance for the risk management of concrete gravity dams during the operational period. And the results may provide a scientific basis for the engineering staff to take corresponding measures to avoid negative load combination to reduce the formation and development of cracks, as well as the reinforcement measures.