Authors: Jorge Gomes, José Vieira de Lemos

The design of dams, according to the Portuguese regulations, includes the verification of the safety for several failure scenarios. In this paper, we present an example of combined application of experimental and numerical methods: i) determining the safety factor of an arch dam for a rupture scenario of sliding along the foundation for static actions, ii) study the dynamic behaviour of gravity dam for the rupture scenario of sliding along the foundation. The experimental results were compared with those obtained from mathematical calibrated models.

Jorge Gomes | José Vieira de Lemos
Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil (LNEC), Lisboa, Portugal