Seismic loading of hydraulic structures

This publication deals with the dynamic loading of hydraulic structures, with Emphasis on navigation Locks. Loading approaches of the dynamic soil and water pressures under consideration of the soil-water-structure-interaction are discussed. Aim of this study is to verify and to enrich existing analytic solutions found in the literature using numerical analyses. The commercial FE program ABAQUS is used for this purpose. The influence of a flexible wall based on elastic foundation on the dynamic soil and water pressures is shown. Further parameters of this study are the contact modelling between the wall and the soil, the mechanical characteristics of the retained soil material, as the shear modulus and the Poisson's ratio and the existence of a neighboring wall. As computational methods both steady state analyses in frequency domain and direct integration analyses in time domain are used and compared.