Simulation: Cracking a dam

You're going to simulate the growth of a crack in a dam! You are going to use what you've learned so far to help you do it. You'll be using a web version of the program call FRANC2D, created at Cornell University (#).

But first, you need a dam to model! Look up a dam near your hometown, or anywhere really, at National Inventory of Dams and take down the information if you haven't already done so.

This is a review of the steps in a simulation.

Watch the animations of each step (they will open in a new browser window):

Draw a two-dimensional scale model of your dam. [of an arch dam] [of a gravity dam]
	Attach your dam to the foundation at the bottom edge (red dots) [on an arch dam] [on a gravity dam]
Put forces on your dam (yellow dots) -- usually water force and weight of concrete [on an arch dam] [on a gravity dam]
	Put a crack in your dam (green line) [in an arch dam] [in a gravity dam]
Tell the computer to run an analysis of the cracking in the dam.
	Check out how the crack grew [more on the results]

Why are there are these triangles in the pictures? The program breaks your structure up into triangles to make it easier to analyze. It's just doing its job.