Encarnación Martínez-Moreno, Iván Alhama, Gonzalo García-Ros

Abstract: Before building gravity dams, some verifications must be carried out in order to check its safety, most of them related to groundwater flow and pore pressure distribution at the base of the structure. By placing a sheet pile under the dam, these phenomena, connected to piping and the value and location of the uplift force, can be controlled. These variables are usually studied considering the soil as isotropic, which simplifies the problems to obtain universal solutions, whether these are graphical or analytical. Nevertheless, assuming this simplification, real scenarios are not reflected, for example anisotropic hydraulic conductivities. In this paper, the effect of the location of a pile under the dam in different scenarios is studied: dam without a sheet pile and dam with a sheet pile located at the heel, centre and toe of the structure, modelling two different media in all cases, with isotropic and anisotropic hydraulic conductivities. In this way, the change in safety due to the pile and anisotropy can be considered. The scenarios are simulated with a tool based on the network method, with which, employing the electrical analogy, the variables of the problem (hydraulic potential, h, and groundwater flow, Q) are obtained by solving electric quantities voltage (V) ad electric current (I), respectively.

Keywords: dam safety, network method, sheet piles, electrical analogy.

Date Published: August 24, 2021
DOI: 10.11159/ijci.2021.020

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