Time domain analysis of dam-reservoir interaction

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to propose a semi-analytical method for studying the interaction between reservoir and concrete gravity dams.Design methodology approach - The reservoir is assumed to be unbounded at the far end and the solution is sought for incompressible and in-viscid fluid. A concrete gravity dam is assumed to behave as a cantilever beam of variable section, and the inclination of the neutral axis is ignored.Findings - It is shown that use of the differential quadrature method (DQM), with a few grid points in conjunction with the finite difference method (FDM), yields an acceptable convergence of results. Comparing the results of the proposed method with those of the literature shows the competency of the method.Originality value - DQM for space derivatives and FDM for time derivatives are used to discretize the partial differential equation of motion.