Probabilistic Concept for Gravity Dam Analysis

This report describes a probabilistic concept for evaluating the safety of concrete dams against sliding and overturning failures in terms of the various sources of uncertainty underlying the design parameters. This concept is used to compute the probability of sliding and overturning failures of two moderately low nonoverflow gravity dams designed using conventional design procedures for reservoir water loadings, and in one instance, earthquake loadings. The results show that it is possible to quantify the safety of a dam in a probabilistic sense.