Sharif Digital Repository

Concrete dams are one of the most important infrastructures in every country and the seismic safety assessment of them is a major task in dam engineering field. Dam–foundation–reservoir system analysis is a complex interaction problem because this system consists of three domains with different behaviors. For accurate analysis of this system, some important factors should be considered such as foundation mass and earthquake input mechanism. In this paper, the effect of foundation mass and earthquake input mechanism on seismic response of concrete gravity dam is investigated. For this purpose, two different methods are introduced for modeling of massed semi-infinite foundation in finite... 

One of the main concerns in using commercial software for finite element analyses of dam-foundation-reservoir systems is that the simplifying assumptions of the massless foundation are unreliable. In this study, an appropriate direct finite element method is introduced for simulating the mass, radiation damping and wave propagation effect in foundations of dam-foundation-reservoir systems using commercial software ABAQUS. The free-field boundary condition is used for modeling the semi-infinite foundation and radiation damping, which is not a built-in boundary condition in most of the available commercial software for finite element analysis of structures such as ANSYS or ABAQUS and thus... 

In this paper, a simple finite element model for seismic analysis of retaining walls is introduced. The model incorporates nonlinearity in the behavior of near wall soil, wall flexibility and elastic free field soil response. This model can be employed in nonlinear modeling of retaining walls and bridge abutments. The advantages of this model are simplicity and flexibility in addition to acceptable precision. Using this finite element model, an analytical study is conducted on several soil-wall systems using nonlinear time-history analysis by applying real earthquake records. Based on the results of these analyses, new seismic soil pressure distributions are proposed for different soil and... 

It has been known for many years that the type of soil under structures affects the structural performance during earthquakes. In fact, the soil affects the structural response in two ways, through the change in the free-field motion (usually known as the site effect) and due to Soil- Structure Interaction (SSI). The site effect has been included in the seismic codes from the most beginning. However, the SSI effect had not attracted much attention. The most significant intervention in this regard has been the 1978 inclusion of SSI in the tentative provisions of ATC3-06 in the United States, which is based on the results of studies on elastic response of soil structure systems. The effect of... 

Liquefaction is a phenomenon through which saturated sandy soil loses its shear strength and turns into a liquefied state. One of the most detrimental consequences of liquefaction is the reconsolidation volumetric settlements after the earthquakes, which is due to the dissipation of excess pore pressure caused by earthquakes. Severe floods can follow these settlements in free fields such as grounds close to the sea or rivers. Several researchers studied this phenomenon using data obtained from experiments in the lab or observations in the fields. Previous works were mainly based on a limited number of experimental observations and considered loadings and boundary conditions that were...