Page - 1164 - in Book of Full Papers - Symposium Hydro Engineering

COMMISSION INTERNATIONALE DES GRANDS BARRAGES ------- VINGT-SIXIÈME CONGRÈS DES GRANDS BARRAGES Autriche, juillet 2018 ------- FULL WAVE BASED DAMAGE IDENTIFICATION IN DAMS Muyiwa E ALALADEa), Frank WUTTKEb), Tom LAHMERa) a)Institut für Strukturmechanik, BAUHAUS-UNIVERSITÄT WEIMAR b)Department of Geomechanics & Geoengineering CHRISTIAN-ALBRECHTS-UNIVERSITY KIEL GERMANY 1. INTRODUCTION A large percentage of dams in operation today are more than 50 years old and as such the true condition of its structural integrity is not fully known. The deterioration of dams may result both from short and from long term effects. In most cases these effects may not be immediately noticed. To prevent sudden dam failure because of accumulated damages overtime, the timely identification of weak heterogeneous zones which may impair the dam’s safety and operation is essential. Unfortunately, the conventional methods are tedious, time consuming, expensive and sometimes inefficient. To tackle these challenges, various numerical methods and inverse analysis has been proposed by the authors [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] considering the coupling effects on various phenomena present in the operational life cycle of the dam. With the recent technological improvements in computational capabilities, waves have increasingly been applied to probe and obtain information on the structural integrity of mainly sub-surface structures. Information from the reflection, refraction and diffraction of these waves gives insight into possible anomalies which may negatively impact the structural stability and performance. Quite many research projects have been carried out with regards to wave modeling underneath the earths’ surface. There exist several code 1164