Pulvino and peripheral joint eects on static and seismic safety of concrete arch dams

One of the methods in limiting tensile stresses in arch dams and removingstress concentrations at the dam-foundation interface is setting the dam body on a concretesaddle called a pulvino. in the present study, the eects of pulvino and peripheral jointson the static behavior and seismic performance of arch dams are investigated. dez damwith a height of 203 m was selected as a case study and all contraction joints of the dambody were modeled using the discrete crack approach based on as-built drawings. also, thesurrounding rock was modeled as a mass-less medium tied to pulvino. the dam-reservoirfoundationsystem was analyzed under static loads accounting for stage construction eects,hydrostatic and thermal loads. the provided numerical model was then excited using nearandfar-eld earthquake ground motion. it was found that modeling the peripheral jointbetween the saddle and the main dam body changes the direction of principal stresses andtheir distribution patterns, and the safety of the system is improved. in addition, overstressed surfaces on the faces of the dam body decreased in comparison with the modelwithout a peripheral joint.