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Fontana Simulations

Analyses of Fontana Dam were performed by the TVA (#) and by the Cornell Fracture Group (#).

The TVA (#) used computer simulation to determine two things: initial cause of cracking and where and how big to cut a slot to help fix the cracking. They first modelled the entire dam to learn about its behavior and learn what to expect from the model. Using this information, they modelled only half of the dam. This decreased the computation time and allowed them to concentrate on the half of the dam near the cracking.

Model of half of the dam.
courtesy of the TVA

Cornell researchers used computer simulations to try to recreate the cracking in Fontana Dam.

The two dimensional model included part of the foundation of the dam.

courtesy of A.R. Ingraffea

The weight of the dam and thermal expansion were applied as forces on the dam in the computer simulation. The model was able to predict cracking very close to the actual crack path.

courtesy of A.R. Ingraffea

Three-dimensional analyses were used to determine the boundary conditions for the two-dimensional analysis. Defining the boundary conditions for this dam is difficult because of the curve of the dam.

This color contour shows the horizontal movement of the dam. Red indicates the greatest movement horizontally, purple the least.

courtesy of A.R. Ingraffea

Fontana problem Fontana current status