Hydrodynamic pressure on an accelerating dam and criteria for cavitation

Summary The effect of finite reservoir on the hydrodynamic pressure due to horizontal as well as vertical ground excitations has been studied. It is found that for horizontal accelerations the hydrodynamic pressure force decreases as the size of the reservoir decreases. The effect of vertical acceleration on the pressure force on a dam is simply to adjust the hydrostatic pressure by replacing the gravitational constant by an effective gravitational acceleration and this is true for any arbitrary shapes of the reservoir. A simple criterion has been presented in this paper which would enable dam engineers to determine whether a given earthquake could cause cavitation at the dam-water interface or not.