Stability assessment method of damaged concrete gravity dams subjected to penetration explosion

Abstract

The structural stability of concrete gravity dams is of primary importance. In this context, a quantitative and effective stability assessment method for concrete gravity dams subjected to penetration explosion is proposed by employing a series of analytical, numerical, and experimental approaches. Firstly, field blast test is carried out to obtain the possible damage characteristic and mode of a dam model to internal explosion. A fully coupled Lagrangian-Eulerian method is adopted to establish numerical models in this paper, and the validity of this method is discussed by comparing results obtained from this method with those obtained from the blast test. Then, the empirical and theoretical formulas of the penetration-explosion parameters for concrete gravity dams are presented, and these parameters contain penetration depth, damage mode, and damage range, which are the premise of the stability analysis. Moreover, these formulas are verified by the numerical models. Subsequently, the stability analysis method for damaged concrete gravity dams to penetration explosion is put forward. In the process of the stability analysis, structural stresses of the dam with different damage modes are gained, and then anti-overturning and anti-sliding stability analysis are conducted. In addition, a stability index and classification criterion for concrete gravity dams subjected to penetration explosion are proposed, and damage levels are quickly defined in four categories based on the criterion. Finally, a stability assessment model is established on the basic of the former analysis, which can effectively predict the stability performances of damaged concrete gravity dams under various penetration explosion attacks.