EFFECTS OF CORE STRUCTURE IN MULTIPHASE SIMULATION OF AN EARTH DAM

One of the most popular themes in earthquake geotechnical engineering is the simulation considering the phase interaction among different phases inside the soil medium. The present article aims at providing numerical simulations of an earth fill dam composed of multiphase material models. Moreover, the assessment of liquefaction potential is investigated considering the presence of core structure inside the dam body which obviously has great implications for the results. The formulation of the coupled approach is presented as a mixture of three constituents – soil grains, water and air in the pores. Mixture theory is considered including the concept of volume fractions in defining of the coupled approach. An earth dam has a trapezoidal cross section with the presence of core structure inside the dam body. The flow of water is different and simulations are more time consuming for which results from literature are used in verification process. The simulation considers a nonlinear behavior with respect to the water retention curves and material model for the solid state. The hydrostatic distribution of water pressured at steady state conditions show obvious differences in saturation of the earth filled dam and are in accordance with the results from literature. The dam is assumed to be situated above a hard rock formation. The soil material of the dam body is simulated as hypoplastic material model which is nonlinear even for the small deformations. The usage of hypoplastic model and the accumulation of strain in each cycle of the stress – strain relation makes the model advantageous. Results are compared accordingly, and conclusions provide directions for further usage of the multiphase model in simulation of this type of structures