Prediction of permanent settlements of an upstream faced earth dam

In upstream faced earth dams all possible seismic-induced damages may be expressed using crest settlement as indicator, which may be predicted using complete dynamic analyses, or more traditional/simplified approaches such as sliding-block based methods and predictive formulas. The present paper compares results yielded by different analysis procedures applied to investigate the seismic response of an existing Italian earth dam. It shows how the use of both complete dynamic analyses and traditional simplified approaches, rather than resulting alternative each other, can be synergic in supporting the interpretation of the dam seismic response, somehow allowing a mutual check of result reliability. The paper also deal with a critical aspect in carrying out complete dynamic analyses of dam behavior, which is the calibration of model parameters. It shows how a back-analysis-based calibration procedure processing static observations may conveniently be implemented to set part of the high number of parameters characterizing complete dynamic approaches.