Verification Of Material Parameters of Earthen Dams at Diamond Valley Lake Using Geodetic Measurements

Safety of earth dams depends on the proper design, construction, and monitoring of actual behaviour during the construction and during the operation of the structure. Deformation monitoring of large dams and their surroundings supplies information on the behaviour of the structure and its interaction with the bedrock. Monitoring results may also be used in verifying design parameters where the geotechnical parameters are of the highest importance. The determination of geotechnical parameters may be done in situ or in the laboratory. In laboratory testing, the selected samples may differ from one location to another, they may be disturbed during the collection, or the laboratory loading conditions may differ from natural conditions. Therefore, the comparison of the monitored data with the predicted data, obtained during the design, may give important information concerning the quality of the accepted geotechnical parameters. This paper presents a method, using finite element analysis, for modeling effects of saturation of the dam materials in order to determine expected displacements during the reservoir filling. Two large earthen dams of the recently built Diamond Valley Lake (DVL), the largest wate