Sharif Digital Repository

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... 

Seismic modeling of massive structures requires special caution, as wave propagation effects significantly affect the responses. This becomes more crucial when the path-dependent behavior of the material is considered. The coexistence of these conditions renders numerical earthquake analysis of concrete dams challenging. Herein, a finite element model for a comprehensive nonlinear seismic simulation of concrete gravity dams, including realistic soil-structure interactions, is introduced. A semi-infinite medium is formulated based on the domain reduction method in conjunction with standard viscous boundaries. Accurate representation of radiation damping in a half-space medium and wave...