Abstract:

In recent years, earthquakes occurred frequently in the Southwest of China, damaging dams in the region to different extents. Assessment on the seismic damage is necessary to exploring the risk and damage regularity for reservoirs and dams. Fourteen dams in the upstream of Minjiang River after “5·12 Wenchuan earthquake” are selected as evaluation objects. Moreover, impact factors inclusive of project design, operation and management, seismic properties and earthquake damage characteristics are considered, and 11 indexes are selected to form an index system and their weights are determined as well based on the criterion layer. Furthermore, synthetic index method of analytic hierarchy process is used to establish a model of comprehensive assessment. The model is applied to calculate the seismic damage status of 14 dams and discriminate the importance degree of each impact factor. The assessment result is almost consistent with the site investigation, which confirms that the evaluation indexes and their weights are reasonably determined. The result is an important basis for relieving earthquake damage scientifically for large or medium-sized hydropower projects.

Key words: dam, earthquake damage, comprehensive assessment, analytical hierarchy process, synthetic index method