Numerical simulation of thermal stress during construction period of seepage control and reinforcement of aged concrete dams

A numerical simulation of temperature field and thermal stress was carried out for the full process of water-tight core wall construction for reinforcement of an aged concrete dam by use of the universal finite element software ANSYS.The influences of some factors,including the water temperature,air temperature,partitioning of dam body materials,size of concrete lift,and rate of heat generation,were taken into account in the calculation,and the regularities of temperature field and thermal stress during the construction were obtained.The newly poured concrete has little influence on the temperature field of the whole dam body;however,it results in local variation of temperature and stress in the newly poured concrete block,and the stress in the interface of old and newly poured concrete changes a lot.It is also indicated that the temperature variation has little influence on the stress of the whole dam body during the excavation and concrete pouring process,but the thermal load is the main factor causing the dam stress.