Shaking table study of concrete gravity dam monoliths

A series of shaking table tests was performed on three small-scale models of a monolith of a concrete gravity dam in order to simulate earthquake shaking. The purpose of the tests was to examine the nature of crack formation in a gravity dam and the stability of the dam in the presence of cracks. No failures occurred even though the levels of shaking employed were unrealistically high. The good performance owed to the development of crack profiles which had favourable orientations to resist sliding failures in each case. However, the development of an unfavourable crack profile, which cannot be ruled out, and the possibility of water intrusion into open cracks, something not included in the experiments, could lead to failure under significantly lower levels of excitation than those employed.