Experimental study of the effect of vertical acceleration component on the slope stability

Abstract

The paper deals with the stability of earth dams subjected to seismic and paraseismic excitations occurring in the close distance to the dam. The Newmark’s stability approach, classified as a simplified dynamic method, has been extended for two directional dynamic loading case and the evolution of the friction coefficient. The paper is focused on the experimental verification of the proposed method for harmonic and cyclic excitations generated by a simple oscillating device as well as by one-directional shaking table. Main assumptions of the proposed method have been proved and the effect of the vertical acceleration on the stability of the dam has been demonstrated. In the experiments conducted under cyclic loading, the impact of the vertical acceleration on the permanent displacement of the block was equal to 57 %. However, in general, the exact magnitude of this impact depends on many factors, such as the vertical to horizontal peak ground acceleration ratio or frequency range of the vertical component of the earthquake.