FREE VIBRATION ANALYSIS OF A DAM

FREE VIBRATION ANALYSIS OF A DAM

This document describes an example that has been used to verify the natural frequency
of vibration of a dam xed at the base.
Used version:
PLAXIS 2D - Dynamics Module - Version 2011
PLAXIS 3D - Dynamics Module - Version 2012
Input: In this problem, a free vibration analysis has been carried out to identify the
natural frequencies of vibration of a dam. The dam is 45 m high and has a 157.5 m wide
base. The model is shown in Figure 1. In PLAXIS 3D the model is extended by 1 m in the
y-direction. The slope on the left has the ratio of 2(horizontal):1(vertical) and that on the
right side has the inclination of 1.5:1. The dam is constructed of clayey soil which has a
shear wave velocity of 360 m/s. The soil is drained, linear elastic with unit weight of 18
kN/m
3
, Poissons ratio 0.2, E = 571.3 10
3
kN/m
2
. The values of Rayleigh and
Rayleigh have been assumed to be zero to avoid any material damping and Newmark
and Newmark are assumed to be 0.25 and 0.5 respectively to prevent any numerical
damping. Thus, an undamped free vibration analysis of the dam may now be carried out.
The base of the dam is xed in both directions and the rest of the dam is allowed to
vibrate only in the horizontal direction.
The self-weight of the dam has not been considered for generation of initial stresses in
the initial phase. So, initial stresses have become zero. A plastic analysis (staged
construction) thereby has been performed in Phase 1 with a static force (load system - A)
of 1000 kN/m acting laterally at the top left corner of the crest (see Figure 1). The next
phase (Phase 2) was chosen to carry out the free vibration analysis for 2 sec and the
calculation for this phase has been allowed to take into account the displacements
obtained from the previous phase. For the free vibration analysis phase, the kernel
automatically sets the load system A to zero and performs the dynamic analysis. For the
numerical procedure the Newmark alpha and Newmark beta parameters for the time
integration are dened as 0.25 and 0.5 respectively.
Figure 1 Geometry, nite element mesh and boundary conditions
Output: The time history of displacement is obtained at a point situated on top of the
dam. The corresponding Fourier transform plot is also obtained in PLAXIS. These two
plots are shown in Figure 2 and Figure 3 respectively. The FFT plot (showing the Power
vs. Frequency) clearly shows 2 distinct peaks at frequencies 2.82 Hz and 6.35 Hz
respectively.
Verication: The natural frequency of vibration of a dam may be calculated according to
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VALIDATION & VERIFICATION
Figure 2 Time history of displacement on top of the dam obtained in PLAXIS
Figure 3 Power versus frequency on top of the dam obtained in PLAXIS
the following equation (Kramer, 1996):

n
=
V
s
H

n
8
(4 + m)(2 m) (1)
where,
n
is the n
th
natural frequency of the dam in rad/s, H is the height of the dam,
n
is the n
th
root of a period relation for the rst ve modes of vibration (Kramer, 1996), m is
the stiffness parameter which relates the shear modulus of soil at depth z to the average
shear modulus at the base according to G(z) = G
b
(z/H)
m
.
The results obtained by PLAXIS have been veried with the results obtained from the
closed form analytical solution. The rst 2 natural frequencies of free vibration of the
same model of the dam are reported to be 3.1 Hz, 7.0 Hz respectively (Kramer, 1996).
The values obtained from the analysis by PLAXIS seem to be in close agreement with
these analytical values of free vibration of the dam.
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FREE VIBRATION ANALYSIS OF A DAM
REFERENCES
[1] Kramer, S.L. (1996). Geotechnical earthquake engineering. Prentice Hall, New
Jersey.
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