Research and Application of a Seismic Damage Classification Method of Concrete Gravity Dams Using Displacement in the Crest

Concrete gravity dams are one of the most common water retention structures, some of which are located in seismically active regions. Determination of damage level after earthquakes plays an important role in assessing the safety behavior of concrete dams. Compared with the traditional performance parameters obtained from numerical simulations, such as the damage coefficient, energy dissipation, failure modes, and stress state, etc., the displacement of dams can be acquired from daily monitoring data conveniently and quickly. It is of great significance for the rapid and effective evaluation of dam properties after earthquakes. The residual displacement in the concrete gravity dam crest was adopted as the performance parameter in the paper, and the linear mapping function between the residual displacement and the damage coefficient was established based on the concrete damaged plasticity model (CDP). Based on the traditional classification method with damage coefficient, a residual displacement-based seismic damage classification method with corresponding level limits was proposed. The seismic fragility analysis of Guandi concrete gravity dam was conducted as an example to illustrate the presented methodology. The results indicate that the proposed method is reasonable, effective, and can be easily applied to different projects after slight modifications.