Earthquake recordings on or near Dams

Abstract

This report presents data on earthquake recordings made on or near dams. The serious consequences of failure makes it imperative that dams in seismic regions be designed to resist earthquake shaking safely and economically. To achieve this, designers of dams must be provided with information about those dams that have been subjected to strong ground shaking, with or without damage. The most valuable of such information is provided by seismic recordings made on or near dams during strong shaking, as these show the nature of the earthquake shaking. Unfortunately there exist relatively few such recordings because only few dams are instrumented for this purpose. This report provides a collection of seismic records, ranging from very strong shaking to moderate shaking, which should be informative to engineers who design dams. There have been other cases where dams have been damaged by earthquakes but the shaking was not recorded by instruments. It is hoped that, in the future, all instances of earthquake damage to dams, or earthquake recordings on or near dams, will be described in publications so that the information is available to dam designers in all parts of the world. Earlier reports issued by the Committee on Earthquakes are "Seismic Instrumentation of Dams" by B. A. Bolt and D. E. Hudson, April 1975; and "Evaluation of Seismicity at U.S. Reservoirs" by W. Daly, W. Judd, and R. Meade, May 1977.