Recent developments in safety assessment of concrete gravity dams

Abstract

Most of the dams in India were built in the sixties, when only simple methods could be used to properly design them. Forty years later, despite the progress made in our capability to conduct sophisticated finite element studies, current analyses procedures for safety assessment remain essentially the same as those used earlier for design. The main objective of this article is to highlight the work done in the area of fracture mechanics for safety assessment of gravity dams. It is shown that the conventional strength of materials-based design leads to large factors of safety when compared to the more recent and rational concepts of fracture mechanics