Numerical Simulation of Acoustic Cavitation in the Reservoir and Effects on Dynamic Response of Concrete Dams

This paper describes a numerical model and its finite element implementation that used to compute the cavitation effects on seismic behavior of concrete dam and reservoir systems. The system is composed of two sub-systems, namely, the reservoir and the dam. The water is considered as bilinear compressible and inviscid and the equation of motion of fluid domain is expressed in terms of the pressure variable alone. A bilinear state equation is used to model the pressure–density relationship of a cavitated fluid. A standard displacement finite element formulation is used for the structure. The Structural damping of the dam material and the radiation damping of the water and damping from foundation soil and banks have been incorporated in the analysis. The solution of the coupled system is accomplished by solving the two sub-systems separately with the interaction effects at the dam-reservoir interface enforced by a developed iterative scheme. The developed method is validated by testing it against problem for which, there is existing solution and the effects of cavitation on dynamic response of Konya gravity dam and Morrow Point arch dam subjected to the first 6 s of the May 1940 El-Centro, California earthquake, is considered. Obtained results show that impact forces caused by cavitation have a small effect on the dynamic response of dam-reservoir system.