Seismic Damage Indexes of a High Arch Dam Based on the Monolith

To assess safety of a dam in an earthquake, establishing the performance evaluation index of the arch dam is significant. The finite-element model based on the 289 m-high Baihetan Dam in Southwest China is taken as a case for seismic response analysis, in which the radiation damping of infinite foundation and opening of contraction joints are taken into consideration. Using the incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) approach, a three-component earthquake scaled to 12 increasing intensity levels is applied to the model, and the seismic response of the model is analysed. In this paper, it is proposed to study the damage based on the monolith, so the monolith damage volume ratio and monolith damage area ratio are suggested to determine the most severe part of the dam. Meanwhile, to help identifying the damage of the dam, the response results of contraction joints are extracted to analyse the potential relationship between the proposed indexes, providing a reference for exploring new detection indexes and damage evaluation indexes. In order to explore the possibility of the simplified layout of dam damage monitoring, the dam body is partitioned according to the results of monolith damage development.