ABSTRACT
The objective of this paper is to highlight the importance of a good performance at the joints between layers of an RCC dam, particularly from the point of view of the vertical tensile strength across joints. The latter is a critical design criterion for large RCC dams in seismic areas. Nevertheless, for practical reasons, the compressive strength of manufactured cylinders (or cubes) is usually used for quality control. Therefore, it is necessary to correlate the in-situ tensile strength across joints to the strength of a manufactured specimen.
