Mechanism of Cracking in Dams Using a Hybrid FE-Meshfree Method

Abstract

Cracking has a significant impact on dam safety. A discontinuous hybrid finite-element meshfree (FE-meshfree) method, which inherits advantages from both the FEM and the meshfree method, was developed to investigate the mechanism of cracking in concrete dams. In this paper, first, the performance of the hybrid FE-meshfree method was validated by comparing it to existing experimental and numerical results of a scaled physical dam model without hydraulic pressure. Then, the mechanism of single- and multiple-crack propagations with hydraulic pressure was investigated numerically. It was found that all cracks propagate toward the toes of the structures in the downstream side. The influence of hydraulic pressure seems to become weaker from the top to the bottom of a dam.