A system identification technique is developed to provide dynamic properties of earth dams from their seismic records. The technique is utilized to assess the capabilities and limitation of analytical models in terms of dynamic nonlinear constitutive relationships as well as damping. The technique is based on the least square method using Gaussian hypothesis. Earth dams are modeled as a three-dimensional nonhomogeneous visco-elasto-plastic soil structure. The forward problem is solved using a Galerkin-Ritz formulation in which the solution is expanded using basis function, which is selected to be the eigenmodes. The spatial variation of the excitation is considered by using global shape functions defined on the boundary domain to interpolate the input motion on the dam boundaries using recorded motion at discrete locations. The constitutive model is used to accommodate the nonlinear path dependent behavior of the dam material as well as coupling between different constituent of the soil mixture. The model is implemented using Druker-Prager multi-yield surface model and linear Kelvin-Voigt model. Application to instrumented dams, in recent earthquake, showed significant match between the recorded response and the optimal estimated response
