The Nuozhadu Core Rockfill Dam Centrifuge Simulation Study

As one of the oldest dam type, earth-rockfill dam has played an important role in the long history of dam engineering. With the development of China's economy and the rapid construction of high dams, especially rockfill dams, the central core rockfill dam under design has been leading the world in height. The urgent need for dam engineering requires more researches on high earth-rockfill dam in design theory and method. As a new kind of geotechnical engineering testing method, centrifugal modeling technology can simulate the stress field of prototype in scaled model dam in centrifuge. Therefore it can provide the deformation characters of prototype dam. Therefore centrifugal model test has been applied widely in high earth-rockfill dam research.For high rockfill dam, its stress and deformation properties during construction and operation are important in design and it is an important research subject in dam engineering. Since the height of rockfill dam under design or under construction reaches 300m, current capacity of centrifuge can not simulate the full dam section. The Nuozhadu central core rockfill dam, with the height of 261.50m, is modeled at IWHR's LXJ-450 centrifuge. The size of centrifugal model is determined based on the research of model scaling. The centrifugal tests are conducted under the various accelerations and various stress conditions for the dam completion period and reservoir impoundment period. Moreover, based on analysis of the deformation and stress of the model by linear regression analysis and unequal stress method , the feasibility of using small scale centrifugal model to model dam deformation and stress condition is researched. The result also provides important references for the design and construction. Furthermore, the development of domestic and overseas centrifuges and the advance in high rock-fill dam research are reviewed. Finally, the centrifugal theory and error analysis are discussed and analyzed.