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Frontiers of Structural and Civil Engineering >> 2007, Volume 1, Issue 1 doi: 10.1007/s11709-007-0002-6

Challenges of high dam construction to computational mechanics

Department of Hydraulic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China;

Available online: 2007-03-05

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Abstract

The current situations and growing prospects of China s hydro-power development and high dam construction are reviewed, giving emphasis to key issues for safety evaluation of large dams and hydro-power plants, especially those associated with application of state-of-the-art computational mechanics. These include but are not limited to: stress and stability analysis of dam foundations under external loads; earthquake behavior of dam-foundation-reservoir systems, mechanical properties of mass concrete for dams, high velocity flow and energy dissipation for high dams, scientific and technical problems of hydro-power plants and underground structures, and newly developed types of dam-Roll Com pacted Concrete (RCC) dams and Concrete Face Rock-fill (CFR) dams. Some examples demonstrating successful utilizations of computational mechanics in high dam engineering are given, including seismic nonlinear analysis for arch dam foundations, nonlinear fracture analysis of arch dams under reservoir loads, and failure analysis of arch dam-foundations. To make more use of the computational mechanics in high dam engineering, it is pointed out that much research including different computational methods, numerical models and solution schemes, and verifications through experimental tests and filed measurements is necessary in the future.

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