ABSTRACT
Since 1980 there has been a considerable increase in the construction of Roller-Compacted Concrete (RCC) dams globally. In Mexico the application of this new construction technology has gained interest and to date around twenty dams of this type with different geometries have been built. The aim of this paper is to present a practical methodology for the dynamic seismic analysis of RCC dams and for the evaluation of their performance and potential damage under any seismic excitation. The methodology consists in performing finite element models and step by step analysis in the time domain for a unit impulse excitation. Then, the response obtained is transformed to the frequency domain and convolved with a particular Fourier spectrum of interest to finally get the response Fourier spectrum. From this response it is possible to evaluate the required strength and the performance and probable level of damage of this type of dams.
