Criteria And Methods For Earthquake-Resistant Design Of Dams

Since time immemorial, Japan has experienced numerous earthquake disasters. Naturally, during the construction of dams care was exercised in the selection of construction material and methods and various measures also adopted to impart earthquake resistance to dams. In 1925, Mononobe was the first to propose the design method for gravity dams [ 1 ] and subsequently an earthquake-resistant design method [ 2 ] taking into account hydrodynamic pressure. This was the static structural analysis method based on the seismicity coefficient method and could be considered the foundation of modern aseismic design methods. The design intensity for gravity dams originally proposed by Mononobe was 0.1–0.2 (horizontal seismicity coefficient) and that for fill dams 0.15 (bottom) and 0.2–0.3 (top), proposed by Mononobe in 1934 on the basis of studies done by Matsumura [ 3 ]. It is interesting to note that considerations of the modified seismicity coefficient method were applied in calculating the seismicity coefficient at that time.