Collapse Fragility Curves for Concrete Dams: Comprehensive Study

Abstract

This paper explores the seismic fragility curves for gravity dams with or without ground motion vertical component within the context of performance-based earthquake engineering. Structural analyses are performed using multiple-record incremental dynamic ones. The resulting capacity curves are contrasted with the well-established ones of framed structures. An optimal intensity measure parameter is also selected among 37 variations, and it is determined that the combined spectral acceleration leads to lowest dispersion. Finally, the derived fragility curves using the scaled records are compared with those from probabilistic seismic demand analysis (unscaled records). Results show acceptable consistency between the two methods. In addition, the effect of accounting for the epistemic uncertainty and pool elevation are discussed and are found to respectively alter the dispersion and median value of the collapse fragility curves.