Evaluation of the behavior of Nahreyn embankment dam during construction and comparing instrumentation data with the results of a finite element code

Permanent control of embankment dam stability during construction especially in the instance of first impounding as well as during the project life is a significant issue. The role of clay core in such dams is to prevent water leakage. Rapid construction of a clay core causes pore water pressure to be increased and effective stress to be reduced. This may endanger the stability of dam. Hence, instrumentation of such dams, to monitor their behavior, plays an important role in the dam stability. An earth dam is a continuous structure with non-linear behavior which can be anlysed by finite element method and an appropriate soil model. In this paper, induced stresses and also settlement of a dam during construction obtained from the instrumentation of Nahreyn dam have been compared with the analytical results obtained from a finite element method. Mohr-Coulomb and hardening soil models were used to do stress-strain analysis. It is shown that instrumentation data and the analysis results are in good agreement and that the dam stability during construction and afterwards could be controlled using strength soil parameters and above-mentioned soil models.