For some time, civil engineers have wondered if embankment dams – some built half a century ago – could fail days or weeks after an earthquake. Now, thanks to a new study co-led by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, researchers have demonstrated that design standards for dams are effective for seismic events. Mechanical and civil engineer, Lee Glascoe explains.

"We used multi-scale modeling, which means we modeled to different scales; down to the soil grain and we modeled all the way up to the dam and we scaled between the two. The good news is that we showed that the design criteria that was used in the past is good and that it is sufficient."

The Lab collaborated with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers using the Lab’s robust 3-D computer modeling and did physical experiments using the Army’s centrifuge – the most powerful one in the world.

"What’s really exciting is that such knowledge that we’ve learned in infrastructure resiliency for embankment dams can be extended for looking at levies, dikes, dams."