Study on thrust angles of high arch dam abutment during overloading

In this paper,according to 3D elasto-plastic FEA for arch dam where the D-P criteria is satisfied,a new method based on the high-precision volume integral to compute arch abutment forces is proposed.From the results of 3D FEA of a typical arch dam about 300m height,the non-linear redistribution of arch abutment forces is studied to demonstrate the non-linear interaction of the arch dam abutment.The results show that the thrust angles at different elevations increase during overloading,which reveal the internal mechanism of good performance of arch dam during overloading and the safety factor of the arch dam is underestimated by rigid body limit equilibrium method.