Investigation of Sabalan Earth Dam Settlement at First Filling by Finite Difference Method

The performance of large dams is monitored and evaluated using instrumentation. The main goal of monitoring of dam during construction, the first filling of the reservoir and operation is mainly evaluation of the safety in short- and long-term periods during its life of service. The present study investigates the behavior of earth dam for deformation and stress variation under construction and first filling and compares the results with the experimental instrumentation-measured data. Also, the dam safety is investigated for hydraulic fracture in the first filling and utilization. The Sabalan Earth Dam located in Ardabil Province (Northwest of Iran) was chosen as the case study. A numerical analysis was performed using the two-dimensional finite difference method (FDM) in the FLAC software. The hydraulic fracture possibility was evaluated by the Mohr-Coulomb criterion. The instrumentation results indicated that the Sabalan Earth Dam had satisfactory performance during construction and first filling of the reservoir.