Development and verification of hydroelastic model experiment for the flow-induced vibration analysis of roller compacted concrete dam

To carry out the experimental study of flow-induced vibration for roller compacted concrete dam (RCCD), the improved hydroelastic model experiment (HEME) technology that satisfying both the hydraulic and structural dynamic similarities is presented, and an improved combinatorial method is proposed to effectively and accurately calculate the dynamic characteristics of RCCD model under natural excitation and complex environment. Due to the insufficient study on the simulation technique for the interfaces between adjacent concrete layers in RCCD, the conventional HEME technology which is frequently applied is not applicable to the RCCD dynamic analysis. Therefore, the hydroelastic simulation schemes for cold joints and ordinary interfaces in RCCD are firstly presented based on experimental and theoretical researches and numerical verification. Then, the integral RCCD model is established and its dynamic displacements under flood discharge excitation are tested. Furthermore, the proposed method that combines the advantages of natural excitation technique (NExT), singular entropy (SE) method, and eigensystem realization algorithm with data correlation (ERA/DC) method is applied to calculate the dynamic characteristics of RCCD model. The dynamic characteristics of the RCCD model calculated by the proposed theoretical method are very similar to those of the actual RCCD calculated by numerical simulation, which indicate the effectiveness and accuracy for the improved HEME technology and combinatorial method.