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VALIDATED NUMERICAL MODELLING OF THE STRESS STRAIN RESPONSE OF A SUPER HIGH CONCRETE ARCH DAM

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By RO Cassells – ARQ Dams
QHW Shaw , ARQ Consulting

1. ARQ Dams, Pretoria, South Africa
2. ARQ Consulting, Mauritius

at the SANCOLD 2022 ANNUAL CONFERENCE – 

The Finite Element (FE) Method has been accepted by dam designers as the modern-day state-of-the-art approach for the structural analysis of large concrete arch dams, largely replacing previous approaches such as the trial-load method, the membrane theory method and the cylinder formula method (ICOLD, 1988). The advent of the personal computer and their widespread availability, together with the economic viability of numerical analysis software, have resulted in the general availability and adoption of FE analysis for complex problems, such as dams. Recent increases in computer processing power have enabled the development of advanced and extensive 3-dimensional FE models of dams with complex geometrical configurations.