Analytical Expressions of Hydro-Seismic Forces on Dams

Abstract

Analytical expressions for the determination of hydro-seismic forces acting on a rigid dam with irregular upstream face geometry in presence of a compressible viscous fluid are derived through a linear combination of the natural modes of water in the reservoir based on a boundary method making use of complete sets of complex T-functions.Analytical expressions for the determination of hydro-seismic forces acting on a rigid dam with irregular upstream face geometry in presence of a compressible viscous fluid are derived through a linear combination of the natural modes of water in the reservoir based on a boundary method making use of complete sets of complex T-functions. The formulas obtained for distributions of both shear forces and overturning moments are simple, computationally effective and useful for the preliminary design of dams. They show clearly the separate and combined effects of compressibility and viscosity of water. They also have the advantage of being able to cover a wide range of excitation frequencies even beyond the cut-off frequencies of the natural modes of the reservoir. Key results obtained using the proposed analytical expressions of the hydrodynamic forces are validated using numerical and experimental solutions published for some particular cases available in the specialized literature.