Comparison of coupled and decoupled modal approaches in seismic analysis of concrete gravity dams in time domain

Different methods are available for dynamic analysis of concrete dams. Among these, modal approach is highly popular due to the efficiency of the method. This becomes more significant if the response is to be calculated for several earthquake ground motion records as required in most practical cases. In this study, two different modal approaches have been considered for dynamic analysis of concrete gravity dam–reservoir systems. These are coupled modal method and decoupled modal technique. The former approach utilizes the coupled modes of the system. It is well known that calculation of these modes involves some complications due to its corresponding unsymmetrical eigenproblem. However, the response at each step can be obtained very efficiently in this method. The latter technique, relies on the decoupled modes of the system, which are easily obtained by standard eigenvalue solvers. The equation of motion is also solved with reasonable efficiency in this approach. In the latter part of this paper, analysis of a typical dam–reservoir system is performed by both methods mentioned above. These analyses are compared from accuracy and efficiency point of view.