Performance of Lightly Reinforced Concrete Intake Towers Under Selected Loadings

摘要

In the event of an earthquake, it is vitally important that the catastrophicfailure of a dam and subsequent sudden release of the reservoir be prevented. An important part of the prevention of such a failure is maintaining the ability to control the release of water after the earthquake. For most earthen dams, and some concrete dams, the release of water is controlled through a reinforced concrete intake tower. Most existing intake towers are very lightly reinforced. The functional survival of such lightly reinforced towers is the main concern of this research effort. The ultimate objective of this research was the evaluation and/or development of approximate or simplified analysis procedures for the evaluation of the ductility of existing intake towers. The first phase of the research was a statistical analysis of the inventory of existing intake towers. This tower inventory quantified the distribution and variation of the structural characteristics of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' inventory of existing intake towers as related to their earthquake location hard and assisted in the identification of possible failure mechanisms. The information generated was used in planning the second, experimental, phase of this research effort. The second phase consisted of a series of three experiments, each of which was composed of the static loading to failure of 118th-scale models of a typical intake tower configuration. Both cyclic and monotonic bending loads were applied to the models. Extremes encountered in existing towers. These experiments were successful in demonstrating that the scale models of typical intake towers had significant ductility available.