Numerical simulation of the early-age concrete behaviour of an arch dam

Noemí Schclar Leitão, Eloísa Castilho

Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil (LNEC)

Av. do Brasil, 101, 1700-066 Lisbon, Portugal

This paper reports a case study of the chemo-thermal-mechanical analysis of a concrete

arch dam during its construction and during the first filling of the reservoir. The coupling
between the chemo-thermal analysis and the mechanical analysis is taken into account by
the load transfer method. The nonlinear chemo-thermal and mechanical codes used in the
analysis were developed by the authors.
The hydration kinetics model is formulated in the framework of thermodynamics of
chemically reactive porous media based in the model presented by Ulm and Coussy.
To characterize the chemical behaviour of the concrete mix, an analytical expression for
the normalized affinity function is used. No specific adiabatic calorimetric tests were
carried out and therefore, in order to define the material constants, an exponential function
is calibrated by the best fitting of the estimated heat of hydration at the ages of 3, 7 and 28
days.
Some issues concerning the chemo-thermal FEM analysis of concrete dams are also
addressed, namely the variations of the environmental actions according to the time of the day
and the time of the year, and the solar radiation simulation. The predicted temperatures
obtained from the numerical analysis are compared with the actual temperatures recorded
in-situ by the monitoring system installed in the dam.
The structural response of the dam is assessed by a viscoelastic model. The parameters of
the double power creep law are defined based on laboratory tests performed on samples
extracted during construction.
Mechanical analysis is carried out using a model in which the arch dam is divided into a
series of monoliths separated by radial vertical contraction joints. The contraction joints
and the dam-foundation contact surface are represented by zero thickness interface
elements. The predicted displacements and stresses are then compared with the those
recorded in situ.
The finite element codes used in this study allow good quality simulations of the chemo-
thermal-mechanical response of the arch dam to be obtained, during the dam construction
and during the first filling of the reservoir.

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finite element chemo-thermal-mechanical analysis

hydration heat

solar radiation

concrete arch dam

construction phase

first filling of the reservoir