SIMPLIFIED DETERMINATION OF DYNAMIC STRESSES IN EARTH DAMS

Analyses of earth dams have been made to determine the stability during earthquake loading. The analyses are complex and costly, generally entailing field and laboratory investigations and static and dynamic finite element analyses. The authors have performed a study which compares the dynamic induced shear stresses computed by dynamic finite element techniques to a simplified analysis using a shear wave propagation technique. Even though the simplified technique assumes a horizontally layered deposit, it is shown to compare favorably with the dynamic finite element technique. The comparisons show that the simplified technique can be used to adequately determine the dynamic stresses in an earth dam during earthquake loading. /Author/