Abstract:
Cracks propagating deep inside gravity dams can seriously affect their
structural safety. Due to the potential catastrophic scenarios associated to the collapse
of large concrete dams, it is a fundamental issue to realistically predict the eventual
crack profiles and the ultimate structural resistance associated to the failure
mechanisms.
This work investigates tensile crack propagation in concrete gravity dams by using
some new recently developed numerical techniques (crack-path field and strain injection
techniques) [1-3] associated to a Rankine-type plasticity model. The work carefully
addresses aspects related to mesh independence (mesh bias and stress locking),
robustness, and computational cost, which are the main issues in material failure
modeling. The numerical simulations presented in the paper show the advantages of the
presented approach.
