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A case study on the deformation behaviour of asphalt concrete core dams

Conference Paper · October 2017

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Adrian Kainrath
TU Wien
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Abstract
Asphalt concrete cores in dams as sealing barrier provide a cost-effective and highly flexible solution even for
high dams. Within this study an intense numerical analysis is performed to study the stress and deformation
behaviour of asphalt concrete core dams with different core inclinations. Therefore three models of an 128 m
high rockfill dam with different designs (vertical, inclined and partially inclined core) are introduced in the
current paper. Based on numerical analyses the stress and deformation behaviour of the dam and the core are
studied in order to demonstrate differences between the core designs. The analyses showed only small
deviations of the vertical deformation behaviour of the dam for the core designs examined in this study. The
highest horizontal core deformations were obtained with the vertical core. The inclined and partially inclined
core showed considerable lower horizontal deformations. With regard to the stress state in the core, the lowest
principal stress is obtained with the inclined core.
Keywords: asphalt concrete core, rockfill dam, vertical core, inclined core, deformation behaviour,
numerical analysis.

1. INTRODUCTION

An existing 128 m high rockfill dam with an asphalt concrete core as sealing element and barrier has been
selected for numerical analysis to study the stress and deformation behaviour of asphalt concrete core rockfill
dams with different core inclinations. A soft material behaviour, steep upstream and downstream slopes as well
as the height of the dam are particularly well suited for the case study. Figure 1 shows the zoning of the cross
section of the dam. The foundation of the dam is assumed to be on stiff rock. The upstream dam slope was
designed with 1:1.5 (V:H) and the downstream slope with an inclination of 1:1.4. The width of the vertical
asphalt core is at the bottom 95 cm, decreasing gradually to 50 cm, which is maintained for the top 50 meters.
The cross section depicted in Figure 1 is used as basis for the case study and two alternative designs with
different core inclinations were analysed. Figure 2 shows an alternative design of the dam with a core inclination
of 11V:1H, while Figure 3 shows the design with a vertical core for the lower two thirds of the height and an
inclination of 5V:1H in the upper part. All three core designs are analysed by means of stress and deformation
behaviour in order to provide general design considerations.

Figure 1. Original section of the dam with a vertical asphalt concrete core

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 Figure 2. Design with inclined core

Figure 3. Design with partially inclined core

2. NUMERICAL ANALYSIS AND PARAMETERS

The finite element program Plaxis 2D, which has been developed for the analysis of geotechnical structures, was
used throughout this analysis. The simulations were carried out with a 2D-plane strain model. Three models have
been created with different core inclinations according to Figure 1, Figure 2 and Figure 3. The models used for
the current study consist of about 30,000 15-node triangular elements, which have 12 interior stress points
situated at different positions. The average element size was around 1.4 m. The finite element mesh of the
original dam (model 1) is shown in Figure 6. The model’s horizontal expansion amounts to 870 m, which is 2.6
times the model’s vertical expansion of 326 m. The hardening soil model [4] implemented in PLAXIS was used
for the numerical analysis. It is a modified version of the hyperbolic model. The hardening soil model supersedes
the hyperbolic model by far, using the theory of plasticity rather than the theory of elasticity, including soil
dilatancy, and introducing a yield cap. The hardening soil model accounts for the stress dependence of the soil
stiffness for oedometric and deviatoric loading as well as for primary loading, unloading and reloading. The
stress dependency is modeled with three different stiffness moduli: E50r ef for primary loading, Eoed
r ef
for oedometric
loading, and Eurr ef for unloading and reloading, and the parameter m for the amount of the stress dependency. The
stress dependency of the stiffness is nonlinear and given by the following equation:

ref   3  c  cot 
m
 (1)
E50  E50 
 p ref  c  cot  

 
where c is the cohesion; φ is the friction angle; pref is the reference stress; σ3 is the minor principal stress, which is
the effective confining pressure applied in a triaxial test; and E50r ef is the reference stiffness modulus
corresponding to the reference stress pref, which is determined from a triaxial stress-strain curve for a mobilization
of 50% of the maximum shear strength. The unloading/reloading path is modelled as purely (linear) elastic with
the reference Young’s modulus for unloading/reloading Eurr ef .

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 Figure 4. Hyperbolic stress-strain relation

In the hardening soil model, two different hardening mechanisms (i.e., isotropic and deviatoric) account for the
history of stress paths. Therefore, a shear hardening yield surface (cone) as indicated in Fig. 5 is introduced. For
isotropic stress paths, a cap-type yield surface is used to close the elastic region. Due to shear hardening, the
shear yield locus can expand up to the Mohr-Coulomb failure surface while the cap expands due to volumetric
hardening as a function of the pre-consolidation stress. A detailed description of the hardening soil model can be
found in [4].

Figure 5. Yield contour of the hardening soil model in total stress space

Figure 1-3 depicts the zoning of the models which were taken into account with seven different zones. For all
dam zones, the hardening soil model was used. The bedrock as well as the concrete plinth was implemented with
a linear elastic relationship. Since no test data for the dam materials were available the parameters have been
derived from [5, 6, 8]. The parameters used in the current study are shown in Table 1. The construction of the
dam in the numerical model was carried out in sequential steps with a layer thickness of about 5 meters. The
reservoir level was sequentially increased in the numerical model with the dam height.

Figure 6. Numerical model with vertical core

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 Table 1- Parameters for the numerical simulation
Zone Bedrock Concrete Asphaltic Transition Transition Shoulder Shoulder
Core Zone Zone crushed rockfill – rockfill –
Gravel rock well bad
compaction compaction
Zone 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Model LE LE HS HS HS HS HS
E [kN/m²] 300000 30000000 - - - - -
ν [-] 0,3 0,15 - - - - -
E50ref [kN/m²] - - 15000 76000 95250 76200 50000
Eoedref [kN/m²] - - 14.000 60.000 57000 68000 43000
Eurref [kN/m²] - - 30000 210000 300000 210000 120000
m [-] - - 0,21 0,48 0,25 0,45 0,4
φ [°] - - 45 45 45 45 45
c [kN/m²] - - 580 1 1 1 1
ψ [°] - - 2 7 7 7 7
νur [-] - - 0,2 0,2 0,2 0,2 0,2
LE…Linear Elastic model, HS…Hardening Soil model

3. RESULTS OF THE STRESS ANALYSIS

Figure 7 shows the vertical and horizontal effective stress distribution for all three core types at maximum
reservoir level. It can be clearly seen from the plots, that the downstream zone adjacent to the core undergoes a
reduction of the vertical stress, accompanied by a significant increase of horizontal stress. In those areas the plots
indicating a strong rotation of the principal stress directions. Due to the high horizontal stress, it is obvious that
the quality and compaction of this area mainly influence the shear deformation of the core. In general, only slight
differences can be seen from the vertical and horizontal stress distribution of the three different core designs.

Vertical stress Horizontal stress

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 Figure 7. Vertical and horizontal stress

4. RESULTS OF THE DEFORMATION ANALYSIS

Figure 8 shows the vertical and horizontal deformation for the three different core designs caused by construction
and impounding. The graphs show, that the highest vertical deformation occurs in the upstream shoulder,
adjacent to the core. The highest settlements are achieved with a vertical core, followed by the partially inclined
core. The model with the inclined core shows the lowest settlements. With regard to the horizontal displacements,
the partially inclined core shows the lowest values.

Vertical deformations Horizontal deformations

Figure 8. Vertical and horizontal deformation

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The shear strains after impounding are depicted in Figure 9. It can be seen from the graphs that different shear
zones occur in the upstream shoulder. The zones develop because of the horizontal deformation of the core
during impounding. The water pressure acting on the impermeable core leads to a horizontal core deformation
and subsequently a stress reduction in the upstream zones adjacent to the core. For the vertical core, only one big
shear zone occurs, while for the inclined core smaller local shear zones are distribute over the height.

Figure 9. Shear strains after impounding

The horizontal core deformations of all three core types are depicted in Figure 10. The model with the vertical
core shows the highest horizontal deformation of about 350 mm at mid height. The model with the partially
inclined core gives the lowest horizontal core deformations. Figure 7 and Figure 10 show that the lowest part of
the core needs a high transversal deformation to balance the stress differences between the upstream and
downstream side. In this area the core undergoes a high shear deformation to arouse a downstream resistance
against the high horizontal stress.

Figure 11 depicts the mean effective stress in the core for all three models. The graph clearly indicates the
differences between the vertical core and the inclined core. For the inclined core, the mean effective stress p’ in
the core is about half the stress of the vertical core. The inclination of the upper part of the core has only a slight
influence on the stress state in the asphalt concrete core.

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 Figure 10. Horizontal core deformation Figure 11. Mean effective core stress

5. CONCLUSIONS
A numerical analysis on an 128 meter high rockfill dam has been conducted to study the influence of different
core designs on the stress an deformation behaviour of the dam. Therefore vertical, inclined and partially inclined
core were investigated. The results of the presented study show only minor differences in the vertical deformation
behaviour of the dam for the three models. The settlements of a dam with an inclined core are slightly smaller,
compared to a similar dam with a vertical core. In contrast to this, an inclined or partially inclined core
considerably reduces the horizontal core deformations. The mean effective stress in the core is about half the
stress of a vertical core.

6. REFERENCES

1. Höeg, K. (1993). “Asphaltic concrete cores for embankment dams”. Stikka Press, Oslo, Norway.
2. Hoeg, K., Valstad, T. and Kjaernsli, B. (2007), “Asphalt core embankment dams: Recent case studies and
research”. Hydropower & Dams, 13(5), pp. 112-119.
3. Hoeg, K., Wang W. (2017), “Design and construction of high asphalt core embankment dams”. 85 Annual
Meeting on International Commission on Large Dams, Prague, Czech Republic.
4. ICOLD. (1992). “Bituminous cores for fill dams”. Bulletin 84. International Commission on Large Dams
(ICOLD), Paris.
5. Schanz, T., Vermeer P.A. and Bonnier B.G. (1999), “Formulation and verification of the Hardening-Soil
Model”. Beyond 2000 in Computational geotechnics, Amsterdam.
6. Smesnik M., Tschernutter P., and Hofko B. (2017), “Laboratory method to simulate short-term aging of hot
mix asphalt in hydraulic engineering”. Construction and Building Materials 150, page 435-441.
7. Tschernutter, P, and Kainrath, A. (2016), “Design considerations and behavior of reinforced concrete core
dams during construction and impounding”. Water Science and Engineering, 9(3), pp. 212-218.

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 8. Tschernutter, P. and Nackler, K. (1991), “Construction of Feistritzbach Dam with Central Asphaltic Concrete
Membrane and the Influence of Poor Quality Rock on Fill Behaviour”. Proceedings of the XVII ICOLD
Congress, Vienna, pp. 435−442.
9. Tschernutter, P. (2009), “Influence of soft rock-fill material as dam embankment with central bituminous
concrete membrane”. LTBD09, Graz, Austria.
10. Wang, W. (2008). “Research on the suitability of asphalt concrete as water barrier in dams and dikes”. Ph.D.
thesis, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.

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