Seismic analysis of hardfill dams considering spatial variability of material parameters

Abstract The spatial variability of hardfill material parameters is usually ignored in the seismic assessment of hardfill dams. Thus, this research investigates the impacts of material parameters spatial variability on seismic response of hardfill dams. In addition, a method to establish the relationship between spatial distribution of material parameters and dynamic response of hardfill dams is proposed. In this paper, a 100 m high hardfill dam was taken as an instance and the heterogeneity of hardfill mass density, Young's modulus and tensile strength are all considered using the random finite element method. The effects of the correlation between hardfill tensile strength and Young's modulus, the correlation between Young's modulus and mass density, correlation length, the dimension of random field and ground motions are also discussed. Then the relationship between seismic response of hardfill dams and the specific spatial distribution of the material parameters is also investigated. The results confirm the importance of considering spatial variability of hardfill material parameters in the seismic assessment of hardfill dams. It is found that the correlation length could significantly affect the seismic response of hardfill dams. In the case of this study, the maximum severe damage probability is twice as large as the minimum severe damage probability under different correlation lengths.