Thermal and Structural Response of RCC Dams During Their Service Life

What is it about?

Roller compacted concrete (RCC) dams are vulnerable to cracking as a result of high tensile stresses due to material properties, thermal and mechanical loads. Making reliable prediction of stress fields, and thereby temperature cracking risk form an important part of the material modelling. The present study figures out the changes in thermal stresses and crack fields of the Kinta RCC dam at the end of the construction and its service life. Water temperature at various levels of the reservoir and its fluctuations were considered in the present study.

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Why is it important?

The developed finite element program has been used in the analysis. Based on the obtained results, it is revealed that there is an increase in the thermal stresses after some years of dam completion. However, their location and distribution are mostly similar.