SEISMIC RESPONSE OF TEHRI

DAM

Dr.STGRaghu Kanth &Maheshreddy

IndianInstituteofTechnologyMadras

Current science
June 2014

It is quite apparent that the structural layout (particularly related to faults and

thrusts in the areas chosen) and the seismicity of the region were not taken into
consideration.
Overtopping of dam due to waves generated in the impounded water of reservoirs

behind dams, besides slope failures and attendant mass movements.

It would be safer to design dams that can withstand PGA as high as 1.0g.

WCE
Prof. R.N. Iyengar, (Chairman)
Prof. D.K. Paul,
Dr. R.K. Bhandari,
Prof. Ravi Sinha,
Dr. R.K. Chadha
Dr. Prabhas Pande,
Prof. CVR Murthy,
Dr. A.K. Shukla (Member-Secretary)
Project Team
Dr.STG Raghukanth
CSIR SERC
http://www.ndma.gov.in/en/study-reportsof-mitigation-division.html

Advances in Engineering
Seismology

SeismicHazardofIndia Installation
details
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5.

NavigatetoGooglePlayorPlayStore
SearchSeismicHazardofIndia
TheapplicationisavailableforFreeongoogle play.
ReaddescriptionandInstallapplicationonyourandroiddevices.
Compatibleforandroid3.0andabove(MobileandTablets).

TEHRIDAM
Tehri dam is an earth and rock-fill dam located in the CSG region of Himalaya and
constructed across the Bhagirathi River.
The height of the dam at the deepest point is 260.5m.

The width of the crest is 20m with a 9.5 m of freeboard and spans 574m across the valley.
The base width of the dam in upstreamdownstream direction is nearly 1 km.
The Tehri Hydro Development Corporation Ltd (THDC) reported the first six natural time periods
for the central section of the dam as 2.272, 1.672, 1.476, 1.256, 1.087, and 1.104 seconds.
These time periods are calculated by two dimensional finite element analysis.
The shear wave velocity (Vs) for the dam material has been estimated to be 300-320 m/s
(Iyengar 1993).
The dam has been designed for an effective peak ground acceleration (EPGA) as 0.25g.

Hypothetical Earthquake

Seismic gap is the sections of the plate

boundary that have not ruptured in the past 100
years.
Three seismic gaps are identified
researchers in Himalayan region
o

Kashmir Gap

Central Seismic Gap (CSG)

Assam Gap

by

At present no clear-cut information about

the last great earthquake in the central
seismic gap.
The recent GPS measurements indicate
that the strain in CSG is increasing.
The strains in this region has the capability
of generating one or more great
earthquakes (Bilham and Gaur 2000,
Bilham et al 2001).
Bilham (2001) has estimated slip potential
of 4m for the central seismic gap by
assuming convergence rate of the plate as
20 mm/yr.
The 100 year probability of a great
earthquake in central seismic gap is 0.52
(Khattri 1999).

NGRI
SRTM DATA

The size of the chunk is 35o 35o.

The number of spectral elements are 68.9 million.
The number of degrees of freedom are 12.7 billion.
The average distance between grid points is 2 km
Simulate ground displacements accurately

HIGH PERFORMACE COMPUTING ENVIRONMENT

292 Compute Nodes
Total Compute Power
97 TFlops
IBM System x
iDataPlex dx360 M4
A total of 64 GB RAM
per node

Simulation of ground motion at global level

(r )

2 u (r , t )
u (r , t )

H u (r , t ) f (r , t )

t 2
t

Layers of Earth
2u(r, t )
u(r, t )
1

2
(
(r)

u u g)
t 2
t

The governing equation for the Earth medium in spherical domain subjected to a unit
impulsive double couple applied at location
(Crust and Inner core)
(rs )

2 u (r , t )
u (r , t )
(r )
2
H u (r , t ) f (r , t )
2
t
t

u (r , t )

(r )

f (r, t )

(Outer core)

displacement field,
Material density,

is the Earth's angular rotation vector and

2 u (r , t )
u (r , t )
1

(
(r )
u u g )
t 2
t

denotes the body force.,

elasto-gravity operator

H u (r , t ) (u ) ( u g ) ( u ) g

f ( r ,t) M ( r rs ) S ( t )

KomatitschandTromp(2002).

Mai and Beroza (2001)

Raghukanth and Sangeetha (2014)
STOCHASTIC SLIP MODELS

Sample of slip field (cm) on the rupture plane.

STRONGGROUNDMOTIONDATAAND
SOURCEPARAMETERSOFHYPOTHETICALEVENT
IIT Roorkee, DST, Govt. of India, 2004
294 strong motion accelerographs in the

Himalayan region of India.

Recorded ground motion data for these
events is available in www.pesmos.com.
The recorded small events data can be
used as IRF to simulate ground motions
for future great events.
Since 2005, more than 24 small events whose
magnitudes vary from 3.2 to 5.7 are happened
within the CSG region.
The recorded ground motion data contains
information about the source mechanism
and the medium properties.
Five small events recorded data is
available at Tehri station.
The small events magnitude (Mw) vary
from 3.5 to 5.7.

Recorded acceleration time histories for Uttarkashi-2012 event

The magnitude of the hypothetical earthquake

(Mw= 8.5) and its fault properties like length

(303 km), width (113 km) and epicenter are
taken from Raghukanth et al. (2012).
Strike (300oN), dip (20o), epicenter (30oN,
79.2oE) and the depth to the top of the fault
(Z0 = 15 km).
rupture velocity 2.5 km/s.

Small events epicenter, the location of the station and rupture plane of the
hypothetical event (Black rectangle).

SIMULATIONOFGROUNDMOTIONSFORHYPOTHETICALEARTHQUAKE
The empirical method proposed by Frankel (1995) is used to simulate the acceleration

time histories for hypothetical earthquake.

The main fault is divided into square subfaults.
Each subfault time histories can be taken as recorded small event time histories,
multiplied by a correction factor.
Sum all these subfaults time histories with appropriate time delay.
The correction factor is a function of corner frequency of the small event and slip
distribution of the main event.
The stress drop () for these small events has taken from Raghukanth et al. (2014).
The corresponding corner frequencies for small events are estimated by

25 random samples of slip distributions are generated for hypothetical event.

A total of 25 acceleration time histories are simulated from each slip distribution.
The corresponding response spectra is estimated from time histories.
The mean response spectra (from different events and 25 slip distributions) and its
standard deviation values are estimated.

SIMULATIONOFGROUNDMOTIONSFORHYPOTHETICALEARTHQUAKE

Simulated acceleration time histories at Tehri from Uttarkashi-2012 events.

Comparison of horizontal PGA simulated in the

present study and other studies in the region
Stati
on

Present Dinesh
study
etal.
(1999)

Tehri

(0.50.
3)g

(0.970.
33)g

Sumer
Chopraet
al.(2012)

Babita
sharma et
al.(2013)

0.65g

0.22g

SEISMICANALYSISOFTEHRIDAM
Modeled the dam as 1D and 2D shear beam.
The shear wave velocity (Vs = 310 m/s) of the

dam is taken from Iyengar (1993).

Two different acceleration time histories whose

PGA values are 0.3g and 0.5g are used for

analysis.
Parameters like crest acceleration and shear

strains at different levels are estimated from

seismic analysis.
one-dimensional shear beam theory (infinite
length)

The natural frequencies and modes of vibration

can be given by
n

n
h

G
,

n=1,2,3,...,

y
Yn y J 0 n ,
h

where n, n = 1, 2, 3, ..., are the roots of the Bessel

function of zero order of the first kind, J0(n). The
modal participation factor is given by
Pn

n J1 n

u y , t Yn y Tn t

n=1,2,3,...,

n 1

Tn t n2Tn t Pnug t

x u

The equation of motion governing free vibration of

an elastic wedge considered as a shear beam

2u G 2u 1 u

t 2 y 2 y y

where u(y,t) is the displacement at depth y in the x

direction, and is the mass density of the dam
materials and G is shear modulus.

y
One-dimensional shear-wedge model representing long earth dams

SEISMICANALYSISOFTEHRIDAM
The twodimensional shear beam theory (finite The first six natural time periods for the
central section of the dam reported by
length)
THDC are 2.272, 1.672, 1.476, 1.256,
The dam is assumed to be a triangular wedge in a
1.087, and 1.104 seconds.
rectangular canyon with finite length (l)
2u G 2u 2u 1 u

t 2 y 2 z 2 y y

Thenaturalfrequenciesandmodesofvibrationare
givenby
1
V
nr s
h

The

estimated time periods from 2D

analysis are comparable with the values
reported by THDC.

2 r h 2 2
n

l

y r z
nr J n sin

h l
0

The modal participation factor is given by

Pn ,r

8
r n J1 n

Crest acceleration of dam for simulated ground motion

with 0.3g

n,r=1,2,3,...,

The first six natural time periods from 1D

analysis in seconds are 2.195, 0.9565, 0.6101,

0.4478, 0.3536 and 0.2922.
From 2D analysis in seconds are 1.886,
1.4155, 1.076, 0.9261, 0.8531 and 0.8498.

Crest acceleration of dam for simulated ground motion

with 0.5g

SEISMICANALYSISOFTEHRIDAM(PreliminaryResults)

Earthquake-induced dynamic shear strain (at 0.25h) for two different acceleration time histories.

Since, the representation of a nonlinear material such as the earthen dam by the linear model

used in this study may not represent the real behavior of the dam

CONCLUSIONS
PGRDhastobeconsideredinselectingsites.
Overtoppingofdamduetowavesgeneratedintheimpoundedwaterof
reservoirsbehinddamsduetoPGRD
The maximum crest acceleration values for Tehri dam obtained in the
present study varies from 1 to 1.6g obtained using sitespecific ground
motions.
Thesevaluesarehigherthanthemaximumcrestaccelerationvalues
of0.62to0.96greportedbySengupta (2010).
Themaximumshearstrainsobtainedinthisstudyareintherangeof
1.2103 to1.7103.
Anonlinearanalysisusingthesimulatedsitespecificground
accelerationtimehistorieshastoperformedtounderstandthereal
behaviorofdam(InProgress)

THANK YOU

 The first step in SPECFEM is to create the mesh files.

Single chunk whose center is 25oN and 82oE is used in this study.
The size of the chunk is 35o 35o.
The number of spectral elements are 68.9 million.
The number of degrees of freedom are 12.7 billion.
The average distance between grid points is 4.88 km.

At the top surface the average size of a spectral element is 19.54 km.
The 3D velocity model for the mantle and crust are taken from the work of Kustowskiet
al.(2008) and Bassinet al. (2000).
The viscoelastic constants of the crust, mantle and inner core are taken from Komatitsch and
Tromp (2002).
The topography and bathymetry model available at 5min interval grid (ETOPO5) is from the US
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/).

Strong
motion data
(Chi-Chi
earthquake)

Trackwithabout2mofverticaluplift

Near FieldGroundMotion

Awaterfall7mhighformedduringChiChiearthquake

M M 0 sin( ) cos( ) sin(2 ) sin(2 ) sin( ) sin 2 ( )

M M 0 sin( ) cos( ) cos(2 ) 0.5 sin(2 ) sin( ) sin(2 )
M r M 0 cos( ) cos( ) cos( ) cos(2 ) sin( ) sin( )

M M 0 sin( ) cos( ) sin(2 ) sin(2 ) sin( ) cos 2 ( )

M r M 0 cos( ) cos( ) sin( ) cos(2 ) sin( ) cos( )
M rr M 0 sin(2 ) sin( )

BoundaryConditions

(r , t ) n (r ) 0 r c
2 u (r , t )
(r , t ) n (r ) w h n (r )
r OCB
2
t
u

n
r
|

(
)
|
t
0 r ICB,CM B

| (r , t ) n (r ) | 0

r ICB,CMB

The Earth is divided into a number of hexahedral non-overlapping volume as

shown in Figure 2. Each element is mapped to a reference cube by the
classical Jacobian matrix. In SPECFEM high-degree Lagrange interpolant is
used to represent functions on the element. The nodes needed to define the
Lagrange polynomials of degree n are chosen to be the classical n+1
socalled Gauss-Lobatto-Legendre (GLL) quadrature points.

W u + K u + Bu = F
Mu
M andK aretheglobalmassmatrixandstiffnessmatrix.W containstermsrelatedto
angularrotationvectorandB isrelatedtotheboundaryinteractionsatCMBandICBandF
isthesourceterm.

KomatitschandTromp(2002).

Cubed Sphere Mapping

The Earth is divided into 6 chunks based on the cubed sphere

mapping. These chunks are further subdivided into 25 mesh slices for a
total of 150 slices. Each slice is handled by separate processor. The
total number of processors needed to handle the mesh would be 150.
Each slice is further subdivided into 64 x 64 spectral elements at the
earth's surface.

Thetotalnumberofspectralelementsinthemeshshownis8.3968millionandthetotalnumberofdegrees
offreedomis1.55billion. Sincegridpointsaresharedamongtheelements,theentireglobeisrepresented
by553.4milliongridpoints.Thetotalnumberofdegreesoffreedominentiremeshis1.55billion.The
averagegridspacingattheEarth'ssurfaceisabout7.8km

Bassinetal.(2000).