Hydrodynamic effects during

earthquakes on dams and

retaining walls: Westergaard’s
theory
WRITTEN BY: LEXATUS - OCT• 27•13

 
 
 
 
 
 
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During an earthquake, there are dynamic effects on dams and

retaining walls that can be highly variable. They can go from no
damages at all up to massive destruction.
One of the first studies on the evaluation of the hydrodynamic
actions on a massive gravity dam during horizontal solicitations was
given by H. M. Westergaard with his “Water pressures on dams
during earthquakes“, Transactions of American Society of Civil
Engineering, November 1993.
Westergaard studied a dam with vertical surface under horizontal
seismic accelerations (normal to the surface), with sinusoidal law.
The assumptions were:
– plane motion;
– small displacement, both horizontal and vertical, of the liquid
particles;
– compressible liquid;
– rigid dam;
– infinite reservoir in direction normal to dam.
In this way, he determined the motion equation imposing the
equivalence between internal and external forces acting on the liquid
element of volume dx dy dz:

Where:
– σ is the unit stress in the water due to the dynamic action;
– ξ and μ are the horizontal and vertical displacements of water
particle;
– γ is the specific weight of water.
Additionally, he assumed as linear the law that links the stress to the
increase in volume strain on unit of volume. In this way, he defined
the elastic equation:

Where:
– Ea = bulk modulus of water.
To define the distribution of pressures, he assumed also that the dam
will move during an earthquake with a simple harmonic motion
having period T and maximum acceleration αg (with α being the
seismic coefficient, that is the ratio between the maximum
horizontal acceleration and the gravity acceleration).
The following boundary conditions were defined:
– no stress on the free surface (σ = 0 for y = 0);
– no vertical displacement on the bottom (μ = 0 for y = Hi);
– horizontal displacement of the wall equal to the horizontal
displacement of the ground;
– stresses going to reduce when the distance from the dam
increases (σ -> 0 for x = ∞).
With the above, Westergaard reached to determine the equation for
the maximum distribution of the hydrodynamic pressures, that we
have obviously for x = 0 (that means on the wall of the dam) for the
instants t = 0, T, 2T, …, etc. with T being the period of the seismic
motion.
The pressure distribution has a parabolic shape, with horizontal
tangent on the surface (y = 0) and vertical on the bottom (y = Hi).
The parabolic axis is located on the wall.
With the above outcome, Westergaard defined the equations for the
calculation of the thrust (to be added to the hydrostatic one) and the
bending moment on the dam, for each vertical depth y.
From the above equations (exact, but complex), he reached more
practical ones, approximated but easier to use. With the approximate
solution the parabolic distribution is not vertical anymore on the
bottom.
The pressure at generic depth y (kg/m²) is defined as:

The thrust at generic depth y (kg/m) is defined as:

 
The bending moment at generic depth y (km/m) is defined as:
 
C is a numerical coefficient that, with the height in m and the period
in s, can be written as:

 
Obviously, the maximum values for pressure, thrust and moment are
located at the bottom, hence at y = Hi.
The pressure at bottom (kg/m²) is:

 
 
The thrust at the bottom (kg/m) is:

 
The bending moment at the bottom (kgm/m) is:

 
With a parabolic distribution, the arm of the thrust referred to the
bottom of the dam is:

 
Of course, we need to bear in mind that the above formulas are
related to an approximate parabolic distribution, having the tangent
not vertical at the bottom. Anyway, the error is quite low if the dam
is not very high. It was noticed that with the above equations the
total thrust S is always bigger than the exact one, but with
differences of just a couple of percentage units if the height of the
dam is Hs ≤ 250 m. With dams bigger (Hs > 300 m) the differences
become quite bigger.
In the graph below we can see both the distributions exact and
approximate for a gravity dam of 100 m, seismic period of 1″ and
α = 0.1.

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