DYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF GRAVITY DAMS BY EMPLOYING EFFICIENT FLUID HYPER-ELEMENT

Fluid hyper-element is usually utilized to model semi-infinite region in dynamic analysis of concrete gravity dams. This part of water domain is assumed to have constant depth that extends to infinity in the upstream direction. The accurate dynamic analysis of concrete gravity dam is obtained by employing two dimensional semi-infinite fluid element. The usual method for calculating the impedance matrix of fluid hyper-element is dependent on the solution of a complex eigen-value problem for each frequency. In the present study, an efficient technique is proposed which simplifies this procedure significantly, and results in great computational time savings. The accuracy of this method is tested under various conditions thoroughly and concluded that efficient technique is accurate under all practical conditions.