Damage–Rupture Process of Concrete Dams Under Strong Earthquakes

A new concept for establishing the damage model for high concrete dams under earthquakes based on damage mechanics is presented in this paper. Unlike the conventional approach of considering the residual deformation by means of plastic-damage coupling, the proposed approach relates the degraded apparent elastic moduli of loading and unloading directly to the material experimental data. As such, the nonlinear analysis of the seismic response of dam-foundation systems is simplified and more reasonable, with no recourse to plastic-damage coupling. To verify the proposed approach of damage–rupture process for high concrete dams, the seismic behaviors of the Koyna gravity dam in India and the Shapai RCC arch dam in China both subjected to strong earthquakes were examined. It is demonstrated that the proposed approach can be reliably used to study the damage–rupture behavior of concrete dams under strong earthquakes.