ABSTRACT
The stability of dam slopes in primary and secondary combinations of loading, the growth of pore pressure, the settlement of core due to consolidation, the settlement of fills of coarse grained soil etc may be predicted by various design methods. finite-element method with minimization of the energy functional, by the method of local variations, and explicit Finite-difference method in time domain, which are the most prospective methods for problems with loading paths in terms of nonlinear soil models. The algorithm of stress-strain computations for earth-rockfill dams with inclusion of stagewise construction consists in solving a series of variational problems. The method presented is attractive, despite the hypotheses made, because direction of variations may be suited to the real construction sequence for earth dams, which even softens the assumption on instantaneous construction of a consecutive zone. The configuration of dam soil and soil properties are similar to their counterparts in the dam for which the stress-strain conditions in plane problem.
