Estimation of Permanent Deformations of a High Dam Due to Earthquakes

The objective of this paper is to compare earthquake induced permanent deformation of a large dam, like Tehri, predicted by finite element method and various existing empirical and semi-empirical methods. A two-dimensional finite element analysis (PLAXIS2D) and five different semi-empirical and empirical methods, like, Seed and Makdisi’s method, Newmark’s double integration method, Jansen’s method, Swaisgood’s method and Bureau’s method have been utilized in this study to obtain the probable dynamic behavior of the dam and their results compared to get a range of values within which, the permanent deformation of the dam, is estimated to lie. The maximum deformation (755 cm for M=8.5 and 43 cm for M=7.0) are predicted by Seed and Makdisi’s method while the minimum deformations (14 c