RESEARCH GAPS FOR CONCRETE DAMS. Robert L. Hall! Larry K. Nuss” Ziyan H. Duron® ABSTRACT ‘This paper identifies current technical gaps in our understanding of concrete dams and identifies critical research and development areas. Concrete dams can be safe with appropriate inspections, necessary maintenance, careful operation, reliable stability/performance assessments, and timely retrofits. Safety is accomplished through proper processes developed with research, past experiences, guidance documents, and funding. Currently there are many research gaps. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), in its 2013 report card on the country’s infrastructure, gave the nation’s dams a D grade, stating, “The nation’s dams are aging and the number of high-hazard dams is on the rise.” ASCE warns that the poor eondition of the nation’s aging dams poses an increasing hazard to communities and physical assets located within downstream vicinities. The technical gaps discussed in this paper have also been mentioned in two Congressional Letters. The first leter, dated March 2, 2017, from US Senator Dianne Feinstein to the Acting Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is in response to the Oroville Dam incident. The Senator asks FERC how it plans to update its inspection protocols, particularly with regard to non-destructive testing and assessment methods. The second letter dated April 19, 2017, from the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce to the Comptroller General of the United States requests that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) undertake a review of the FERC’s Division of Dam Safety and Inspections. The letter states that more than half of our dams were built prior to 1970 and have either exceeded their engineered lifespans or will exceed them in the near future. The letter! asks what models, computer simulations, and other analytical tools are used to evaluate anticipated dam performance, establish ranges of safe operation for a dam and its associated facilities, and assess potential hazards in case of dam_ failure. The letter also asks how often these performance assessment tools are re-evaluated, updated, and validated for accuracy. The technical gaps and needs described in this paper start to address these important Congressional questions and can become part of a proactive approach to gaining a wider and more confident understanding of our nation’s current state of concrete dams, their operating conditions, and their safety margins. These R&D efforts will address questions about how to monitor, track, and predict concrete dam performance under changing requirements and conditions, many of which were not considered in the analysis. methods of existing concrete dams, * Robert Hal, Principal, Engineering Innovations, LLC, 112Rue Vernet, Vicksburg, MS 39180, 601-529-0937, Robert. HallPhd@gmailcom. ® Larry K. Nuss, Owner and Structural Engineer, Nuss Engineering, LLC, 10065 Silver Maple Circe, Highlands Ranch, Colorado 80128, 303-517-8504, Larry.K.Nuss@MussEngineering com. * Ziyad H. Duron, Jude and Eileen Laspa Professor of Engineering, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, Ca. 81711, 951-440. 44735, zyad.duron@emailcom Copyright © 2018 U.S. Society on Dams. All Rights Reserved. 1INTRODUCTION ‘This paper uses the results of the incident at Wanapum Dam on February 24, 2014; a retrofit of a concrete dam in British Colombia; a recent benchmarking exercise; and the incident at Oroville Dam on February 7, 2017, to illustrate that the need for new advances in dam safety evaluation and operating procedures is greater today than it has ever been. The case studies point to a common shortcoming in current dam safety practice: the absence of a demonstrated understanding of how a dam actually operates and the implications of changing operating requirements and climate changes for continued and safe operations. Key gaps are identified ‘that illustrate how dams operated daily can fail under extreme loading conditions. These gaps lead to recommendations for research and development (R&D) efforts. A common thread in many of these gaps is the need for modem performance based testing (PBT) of the nation’s concrete dams to determine current operating margins and condition and to provide valuable data for validation of analytical and numerical evaluation techniques. The authors believe a study of these R&D gaps must be conducted to ensure the safe and continued operation of our nation’s aging inventory of concrete dams. Recent events at several dam projects have led to analyses that predicted performances which differed significantly from the actual outcomes. In one example, an analysis of a dam’s large deformations and nonlinear behavior due to significant cracking in a monolith under full reservoir conditions inaccurately predicted a significant release for the reservoir, which did not occur. In other cases, the predicted performances differed significantly from the actual outcomes. These actual events and their outcomes indicate that we need a better understanding of and better predietive procedures for concrete dams and appurtenant structures. This shortcoming is related to an apparently widely held opinion that concrete dams experience adverse dynamic conditions only during extreme loading events. Further, the typical monitoring program for a concrete dam is out of step with the advanced analytical and numerical techniques available today, which leads to another widely held opinion that field- monitoring techniques for concrete dams are unable to produce results that can validate modem analysis tools, As a direct result, there is a gap in the understanding of current conerete dam health and procedures to validate analytical tools to accurately predict long-term performance and failure mechanisms of concrete dams. The absence of research in the area of conerete dams and appurtenant structures is leading to high risk for our nation’s dams, as seen in the partial failure of Wanapum Dam in Washington State and the spillway failure of Oroville Dam in California. Also, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)(DHS 2010) identified the problems with vulnerability of concrete dams. As a result of the DHS report and previous reports, the dams sector has performed significant research aimed at developing tools to determine the vulnerabilities of concrete dams and to identify strengthening measures. Additional research is needed to determine completely the vulnerability of these critical conerete structures. In addition, the lack of research activity has resulted in a shortage of young engineers with the abilities to perform practical, realistic analyses (and design) of conerete dams. This paper describes recent examples of problems that highlight these deficiencies in understanding the responses of concrete dams and further research needs in the area of vulnerability of concrete dams. In the first incident, none of the predicted potential failure modes for the Wanapum Dam Copyright © 2018 US. Society on Dams. All Rights Reserved 2captured the spillway pier distress that actually occurred on February 24, 2014. In this incident, the predictions of a dam's large deformations and nonlinear behavior due to significant cracking in a monolith under full reservoir conditions inaccurately indicated a significant release for the reservoir, which did not occur. In each of the other cases, the predicted performances differed significantly from the actual outcomes. These actual events and their outcomes indicate that we need better understanding and predictive procedures for conerete dams and appurtenant structures. Example 1 ‘The Wanapum Dam began operating in July 1963 and functioned without any major problems for over 50 years. However on February 24, 2014, a displacement of the spillway railing on Wanapum Dam was discovered, which eventually revealed a 2” high by 65° wide planar crack in monolith 4 of the spillway. The monolith had moved downstream and was stopped after rotating and binding itself between its adjacent monoliths. The horizontal crack propagated along a lift ine downstream for several feet and then plunged to the foundation, parallel to the downstream face of the ogee spillway. Above the crack, the concrete section became unstable then moved downstream two inches and rotated slightly, causing damage to monoliths 3 and 5. This incident actually originated with a mathematical error during design, which resulted in the existence of tension on the upstream face of the dam under normal static operating loads. ‘Ambient winter thermal loads and a weak lift joint coupled with static tension created an unstable structure. Typically, the ambient thermal loads are ignored in the analysis of concrete gravity dams. Current procedures for evaluating ambient thermal loads are included in only one of the USACE’s Engineering Manuals (EMs), EM 1110-2-2201, Arch Dam Design (USACE 1994). Current Ems includes no procedures for assessing the effects of weak monolith or lift joints. A Potential Failure Mode Analysis (PFMA) was conducted for Wanapum, and 49 potential failure modes (PFMs) were identified. However, none of these 49 PFMs described the failure that actually occurred. This example reveals the following gaps in assessment of dam safety: + The lack of a Peer Review process that might have discovered the mathematical error in the design which subjected the upstream face of the dam to tension under static loading conditions. * The lack of a physical testing method, or PBT, on the dam that might have identified or predicted the formation of an adverse crack. * The lack of specifications appropriately addressing hot weather placement that might have prevented (1) the emplacement of the weak lift joint on a hot day (90 degrees) in July or (2) a construction oversight issue with the lift joint. (The resulting problem took 51 years to manifest itself.) + ‘The lack of validation testing for structural analysis models that would have shown the need to include thermally induced stresses in the structural analysis of the dam. + The shortcomings of the PEMA process, which did not capture this instability. The practice of allowing dam owners to conduct risk analysis and make risk-informed decisions. Estimated risk values must be based (or anchored) on the available structural analyses performed during design. The risk numbers assigned to a dam can be only as good as the quality and accuracy of the structural analysis upon which they Copyright © 2018 US Society on Dams. All Rights Reserved. 3