Monitoring and numerical simulation of the early-age concrete behaviour of Concrete an Arch Dams

during Construction and First Filling

Noemí Schclar Leitão , Eloísa Castilho

Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil (LNEC)

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

The surveillance program of a dam is adapted to its lifecycle. During construction, temperature plays a
significant part in the cracking phenomenon of mass concrete structures, due to the cement’s heat of
hydration. Therefore, temperatures must be monitored. The initial reservoir filling is the first test of the dam
to perform the function for which it was designed for. In order to monitor its performance, the rate of filling is
controlled and instrumentation data is analyzed.

This article addresses the main aspects related to the analysis of the observed behavior and assessment of
security conditions during the construction of a concrete arch dam and first filling of its reservoir.

The monitoring system installed in this dam allows for a detailed knowledge of the actions and their
structural response, namely: reservoir levels, air temperature, temperature at the structure boundaries and
inside concrete, accelerations, dam and foundation displacements, relative displacements between concrete
blocks, strains and stresses inside concrete, uplift at the dam foundation interface and quantity of water
flowing through the foundation. The observed behavior analysis is performed by comparing the values
measured by the monitoring system with the values predicted by the numerical model representing the
structural behavior of the dam, material properties and loads.

The thermal analysis is described in detail in this paper, along with the simulation of the different actions.
During construction, the dam’s thermal state is affected not only by climatic actions but also by construction
methods and concrete’s constituent materials. The thermo-chemical problem was solved using a heat
transfer model. An exponential function was calibrated taking into account the cement’s heat of hydration at
3, 7 and 28 days and the function obtained was then used to establish the chemical affinity relationship. The
temperature distribution inside the dam was estimated using a 20 nodes finite element model (FEM) which
considered the effects associated with air temperature, water temperature and solar radiation. The
temperatures predicted using the numerical model were compared with the temperatures recorded in situ.

The calculated temperatures were then introduced as an action in the mechanical model, together with the
hydrostatic pressure and self-weight. The dam’s structural response was assessed using the same FEM as
for the thermal action, however the contraction joints and the rock/concrete contact surface were included in
this model and represented by 16 nodes interface elements. The viscoelastic behavior of the concrete was
considered according to the double Power law for concrete creep by Bazant-Panula . The model was
calibrated and validated in order to obtain a good match between the observed radial displacements
measured with the plumb-lines and the FEM results . Finally, calculated tensions were compared with the
registered ones by tension-meters.
Results lead to the conclusion that the dam’s numerical model is representative of its thermo-mechanical
behaviour and that the methodology described in this paper can be effectively used for the safety evaluation
of concrete arch dams.

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

arch dam during its construction and first reservoir filling phases . The coupling between
the chemo-thermal analysis and the mechanical analysis is taking 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 concrete mix, an analytical expression for the
normalized affinity function is used. In order to define the material constants without
specific adiabatic calorimetric tests of the concrete, 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 code are compared with the actual temperatures measured in-situ by the
monitoring system installed in the dam.
The structural response of the dam is assessed by a viscoelastic model ., The parameter of
the double power creep law are defined based on laboratory test s performed on samples
extracted during construction .
For the mechanical analysis, the arch dam is divided into monoliths separated by radial
vertical contraction joints. The contraction joints and the dam-to-foundation contact
surface are represented by zero thickness interface elements.
The predicted displacements and stresses are then compared with the monitoring values.
The finite element codes used in this study show to provide good quality simulations of
the chemo-thermal-mechanical response of the arch dam during construction and first
filling phases.