Thermal Assessment of Karun-1 Dam

In this study, the simulation of the thermal behavior of an arch dam which is subjected to the environmental thermal action during service, the method of solution adopted as well as the evaluation of the different parameters will be described in detail. The case study is a double curvature concrete arch dam (Karun-1 dam) with 200 m height in the Southwest of Iran which is modeled by the powerful scientific ABAQUS software. The ABAQUS program has the ability to transfer heat within the body of the dam with high accuracy, the main challenge of previous researches in the field of thermal analysis of arch dams. In addition to thermal loads, in this study, the effects of hydrostatic pressure and weight of the dam and reservoir-dam-foundation interaction also have been considered and it became distinct that the thermal effects on dam displacements, stresses and strains are significant and would not be neglected.