• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.307-316
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• 2019

Dam deformation should be strictly controlled for the construction of 300 m-high rockfill dams, so the rockfill materials need to have low porosity. A method of using composite grout is proposed to reduce the porosity of rockfill materials for the construction of high rockfill dams. The composite grout is a mixture of fly ash, cement and sand with the properties of easy flow and post-hardening. During the process of rolling compaction, the grout admixture sprinkled on the rockfill surface will gradually infiltrate into the inter-granular voids of rockfill by the exciting force of vibratory roller to reduce the porosity of rockfill. A visible flowing test was firstly designed to explore the flow characteristics of composite grout in porous media. Then, the compressibility, shear strength, permeability and suffusion susceptibility properties of composite grout-modified rockfill are studied by a series of laboratory tests. Experimental results show that the flow characteristics of composite grout are closely related to the fly ash content, the water-to-binder ratio, the maximum sand size and the content of composite grout. The filling of composite grout can effectively reduce the porosity of rockfill materials, as well as increase the compression modulus of rockfill materials, especially for loose and gap-graded rockfill materials. Composite grout-modified rockfill tends to have greater shear strength, larger suffusion erosion resistance, and smaller permeability coefficient. The composite grout mainly plays the roles of filling, lubrication and cementation in rockfill materials.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.315-326
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• 2020

The long-term behavior of rockfill material used in the construction of infrastructures such as dams is of great significance. Because of concerns about the application of weak rockfill material in dam construction, further experimental studies on the behavior of these materials are required. In this study, laboratory experiments were performed to investigate the one-dimensional deformation and particle breakage of the weak rockfill material under stress. A one-dimensional compression apparatus was designed and developed for testing of rockfill materials of different maximum particle sizes (MPSs). The compression tests were performed under dry, wet and saturated conditions on samples of rockfill material obtained from a dam construction site in Iran. The results of the experiments conducted at the specimen preparation stage and the 1D compression tests are presented. In weak rockfill, the effect of the addition of water on the behavior of the material was uncertain as there were both an increases and decreases observed in particle breakage. Increasing the MPS of the weak rockfill materials increased particle breakage, which was similar to the behavior of strong rockfill material. In all of the MPSs examined, the settlement of specimens under wet conditions was higher than that observed under dry conditions. Also, the greatest deformation occurred during the first hour of loading.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.37-48
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• 2016

The hyperbolic stress-strain model has been shown to be valid for modeling nonlinear stress-strain behavior for rockfill materials. The Duncan-Chang nonlinear constitutive model was adopted to characterize the behavior of the modeled rockfill materials in this study. Accurately estimating the model parameters of rockfill materials is a key problem for simulating dam deformations during both the dam construction period and the dam operation period. In order to estimate model parameters, triaxial compression experiments of rockfill materials were performed. Based on a genetic algorithm, the constitutive model parameters of the rockfill material were determined from the triaxial compression experimental data. The investigation results show that the predicted strains provide satisfactory precision when compared with the observed strains and the strains forecasted by a gradient-based optimization algorithm. The effectiveness of the proposed inversion procedure of model parameters was verified by experimental investigation in a laboratory.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2009.09a
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• pp.1025-1028
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• 2009

Earth and rock fill dam is our typical dam because of their inherent flexibility and adaptability to various fundation conditions. In order to secure structural safety, rockfill materials are used angular particles obtained by blasting parent rock or rounded particles collected from river beds. Concrete-faces rockfill dams(CFRD) and Concrete-faces gravelfill dams(CFGD) have become popular in the last 20 years as s result of their good performance and low cost compared with the rockfill dam. These Dams are also constructed by the materials. A key factor in the design of the dams is the deformations induced during construction and upon reservoir filling. These can be predicted using the stress-strain and strength properties can be adequately define. However the stress-strain properties of rockfill are difficult to determine because the properties are affected by such factors as particle grading, size and shape of particles, stress conditions, and particle crushing. In our study, testing of the behavior of the rockfill materials are essential prerequisites to the realistic analysis and design of the CFGD. This paper deals with laboratory testing of particle crushing among the study.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.211-224
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• 2018

In this paper, a predictive method accounting for the scaling effects of rockfill materials in the numerical deformation analysis of rockfill dams is developed. It aims to take into consideration the differences of engineering properties of rockfill materials between in situ and laboratory conditions in the deformation analysis. The developed method is based on the modification of model parameters used in the chosen material model, which is, in this study, an elasto-plastic model with double yield surfaces, i.e., the modified Hardening Soil model. Datasets of experimental tests are collected from previous studies, and a new dataset of the Nam Ngum 2 dam project for investigating the scaling effects of rockfill materials, including particle size, particle gradation and density, is obtained. To quantitatively consider the influence of particle gradation, the coarse-to-fine content (C/F) concept is proposed in this study. The simple relations between the model parameters and particle size, C/F and density are formulated, which enable us to predict the mechanical properties of prototype materials from laboratory tests. Subsequently, a 3D finite element analysis of the Nam Ngum 2 concrete face slab rockfill dam at the end of the construction stage is carried out using two sets of model parameters (1) based on the laboratory tests and (2) in accordance with the proposed method. Comparisons of the computed results with dam monitoring data indicate that the proposed method can provide a simple but effective framework to take account of the scaling effect in dam deformation analysis.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.45-55
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• 2008

CFRD (Concrete Faced Rockfill Dam) has been world-widely constructed due to a lot of advantages which it has compared with rockfill dam and recently, sand/gravel materials, Instead of crushed rock materials, are also utilized as a main rockfill material to overcome geological and environmental problems. In Korea, two dams using sand/gravel materials as a main fill material were designed and are being constructed. In this research, the strength and deformation characteristics of the rockfill and sand/gravel materials taken from 2 dam sites were tested by using a laboratory large triaxial testing equipment for a total of 7 cases. From the results of large triaxial and compaction tests, it was observed that two kinds of materials show a little different compaction, shear strenght and deformation characteristics. It could be expected that the shear strength of sand/gravel material was not disadvantageous compared with that of rockfill materials, however, there was some difference between two materials with respect to behavior characteristics. On the other hand, smaller displacements were observed from numerical analysis based on the data from a large triaxial test when the sand/gravel is used as a main fill material compared with the case when the crushed rock material is used as a main fill material. Finally, in spite of a little different shear strength and behavior characteristic between two materials, it was concluded that it will not lead to a significant problem when the sand/gravel material is used as a main rockfill material.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.119-131
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• 2019

Time dependent creep settlements are one of the most important causes of material deteriorations for the huge water structures such as concrete faced rockfill dams (CFRDs). For this reason, performing creep analyses of CFRDs is vital important for monitoring and evaluating of the future and safety of such dams. In this study, it is observed how changes viscoplastic behaviour of a CFR dam depending the time. Ilısu dam that is the longest concrete faced rockfill dam (1775 m) in the world is selected for the three dimensional (3D) analyses. 3D finite difference model of Ilısu dam is modelled using FLAC3D software based on the finite difference method. Two different special creep material models are considered in the numerical analyses. Wipp-creep viscoplastic material model and burger-creep viscoplastic material model were rarely used for the creep analyses of CFRDs in the last are taken into account for the concrete slab and rockfill materials-foundation, respectively. Moreover, interface elements are defined between the concrete slab-rockfill materials and rockfill materials-foundation to provide interaction condition for 3D model. Firstly, dam and foundation are collapsed under its self-weight and static behaviour of the dam is evaluated for the empty reservoir conditions. Then, reservoir water is modelled considering maximum water level of the dam and time-dependent creep analyses are performed for maximum reservoir condition. In this paper, maximum principal stresses, vertical-horizontal displacements and pore pressures that may occur on the dam body surface during 30 years (from 2017 to 2047) are evaluated in detail. According to numerical analyses, empty and maximum reservoir conditions of Ilısu dam are compared with each other in detail. 4 various nodal points are selected under the concrete slab to better seen viscoplastic behaviour changes of the dam and viscoplastic behaviour differences of these points during 30 years are graphically presented. It is clearly seen that horizontal-vertical displacements and principal stresses for maximum reservoir condition are more than the empty reservoir condition of the dam and significant pore pressures are observed during 30 years for maximum reservoir condition. In addition, horizontal-vertical displacements, principal stresses and pore pressures for 4 nodal points obviously increased until a certain time and changes decreased after this time.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2006.03a
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• pp.846-853
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• 2006

In this study, quantitative sensitivity analysis on rockfill material influencing the dam crest displacement of Concrete-Faced Rockfill Dam(CFRD) was carried out. The purpose of this study is to indicate the most important input parameter and to show the quantitative variation of displacement at the crest of CFR type dam with this input parameter. The rockfill material properties for parametric study were obtained from the results of large scale triaxial tests on 34 rockfill materials in the 22 different sites. From the statistical analysis on these data, some statistical characteristics of rockfill material properties such as property range, distribution characteristics, and correlation between the properties were investigated. based on these characteristics, 27 property combinations were constituted by Latin Hypercube sampling method. Dam crest displacements after construction, impounding, and earthquake loading were evaluated by static and dynamic numerical analysis on each combination. From the sensitivity analysis, it was found that the crest displacement of CFR type dam was absolutely affected by the shear modulus of rockfill material and the effect of friction angle of it was negligible. This relative difference of sensitivity was more outstanding in case of crest settlement than in case of crest horizontal displacement. Also, it was found that the settlement and horizontal displacement of dam crest logarithmically decreased as the shear modulus increased and the difference between the maximum value and the minimum vale amounted to about 9.5 times in case of settlement and about 10 times in case of horizontal displacement.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.24 no.11
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• pp.41-49
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• 2023

In this study, we analyzed the settlement characteristics of rockfill embankments mixed with soil by confirming the physical properties of soil materials mixed with silty materials and analyzing the compression characteristics of gravel materials according to the mixing ratio of soil materials. For this, we mixed silty materials into sandy soil to analyze the compression characteristics of soil materials, and we constructed a foundation by mixing various ratios of soil into rockfill materials with a particle distribution similar to that of river gravel, and conducted a one-dimensional compression experiment using a medium-sized chamber. As a result of the experiment, in the case of mixed soil materials, the Transition Fine Content (TFC) appeared in the range of 21~26% depending on the load condition, and in the case of rockfill materials mixed with soil, as the void filling ratio of soil in gravel samples increases, both total compression and creep compression decreases, but after a 50% mixing ratio, the settlement of amount increases again.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2003.03a
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• pp.299-308
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• 2003

In order to investigate the dynamic deformation properties of rockfill materials in small strain level, cyclic triaxial tests were conducted using the large cyclic triaxial testing apparatus, which was developed by Water Resources Research Institute of KOWACO in 2001. Two types of rockfill materials consisting of granite and shale-sandstone were tested in this study. The test results show that G/G$\_$max/ of granite specimen decreases more than that of shale-sandstone with the increase of shear strain and the increase ratio in the maximum shear modulus G$\_$max/ of granite is bigger than the ratio of shale-sandstone.