Author(s)

Qiang Xu, Jing Li, Jianyun Chen

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Damage reliability analysis is an emerging field of structural engineering which is very significant in structures of great importance like arch dams, large concrete gravity dams etc. The research objective is to design and construct an improved method for damage reliability analysis for concrete gravity dam. Firstly, pseudo excitation method and Mazar damage model were used to analyze how to calculate damage expected value excited by random seismic loading and deterministic static load on the condition that initial elastic modulus was deterministic. Moreover, response surface method was improved from the aspects of the regression of sample points, the selection of experimental points, the determined method of weight matrix and the calculation method of checking point respectively. Then, the above method was used to analyze guarantee rate of damage expected value excited by random seismic loading and deterministic static load on the condition that initial elastic modulus was random. Finally, a test example was given to verify and analyze the convergence and stability of this method. Compared with other conventional algorithm, this method has some strong points: this algorithm has good convergence and stability and greatly enhances calculation efficiency and the storage efficiency. From what has been analyzed, we find that damage expected value is insensitive to the randomness of initial elastic modulus so we can neglect the randomness of initial elastic modulus in some extent when we calculate damage expected value.

Gravity Dam, Damage, Probability Analysis, Pseudo Excitation Method, Mazar Damage Model, Response Surface Method

Q. Xu, J. Li and J. Chen, "Probability Analysis for the Damage of Gravity Dam," Engineering, Vol. 3 No. 4, 2011, pp. 312-321. doi: 10.4236/eng.2011.34036.