There are many old dams in Sweden and, since few dams are constructed today, the main task in risk assessment on the existing dams is often to reduce the risk of failure. RIDAS (Swedish Guidelines on Dam Safety) is used when designing new dams and assess the existing ones. The guidelines include stability requirements for different failure modes, e.g. overturning and sliding, which imply that the load effect from e.g. uplift and ice load need to be less than the resisting loads or moments. The ice load in RIDAS is given as a deterministic value depending on where in Sweden the dam is located. For many years, ice and ice load have been researched, but there is still a lack of knowledge regarding the magnitude of the ice load and how it affects the probability of failure for dams. More knowledge about the actual ice load would result in a lower calculated probability of failure for the dam which could be used to design slender dams or avoid unnecessary reinforcement of existing dams. Dam safety evaluation is often performed with deterministic methods based on safety factors. In recent years, the use of probabilistic methods in dam design has increased. The method has an advantage compared to deterministic methods in safety evaluations of existing dams, since probabilistic methods provide an answer to which parameters that have the greatest impact on the stability of the dam and take into account the variations in each parameter. I this master thesis, a statistical distribution for the variation of the ice load’s annual maximum value was calculated. This was used in the analysis of the probability of failure for solid gravity concrete dams and buttress concrete dams. The probability of failure was calculated for dams of different sizes for overturning and sliding failure modes, and also for three different load cases; without ice load, with a truncated ice load distribution and with an ice load distribution that has not been truncated. The probabilistic stability analysis was conducted in Comrel with ice load as one of the stochastic variables. It was found which sizes of the dams that have the largest impact from the ice load; also what effect extreme values on the ice load has on the failure probability of the dam. The results indicated that the probability of failure for dams lower than 15 m is more affected by the ice load, for both failure modes analyzed. The probability of failure is reduced for all dam types when eliminating extreme values of the ice load, particularly for dams lower than 15 m. In several cases, truncation of the ice load distribution is the difference between an accepted and a non-accepted level of the probability of failure. It is also shown that reduced coefficient of variance for the ice load results in a decreased probability of failure. The conclusion is that solid gravity dams and buttress dams lower than 15 m, with a high consequence class, should be risk assessed with the ice load as a stochastic variable. The statistical distribution of the ice load is still uncertain and the distribution used in this report should not be used globally, rather in areas with a climate similar to northern Sweden. The reason for this is that the measurements that were used to derive the global distribution were mainly performed in areas with conditions similar to those in northern Sweden. A recommendation for further research is to focus on determining statistical distributions for the ice load for southern, central and northern Sweden. An alternative is to use different ice load distributions for the different areas. Another alternative could be to use the same statistical distribution for southern, central and northern Sweden but with different values for where the ice load distribution is truncated, depending on the maximal ice thickness in each area. The recommendation is also to develop a reliable method for measuring the ice load. In addition, attempts should be made to determine whether extreme values on the ice load really exist or if they are effects of measurement errors. Key words: concrete dams, ice load, probabilistic stability analysis, probability of failure
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kth-123819 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Adolfi, Emma, Eriksson, Josefine |
| Publisher | KTH, Jord- och bergmekanik |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | Examensarbete Jord- och bergmekanik, 1652-599X ; 13/01 |
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