Coupling FEM and symmetric BEM for dynamic interaction of dam–reservoir systems

A numerical model coupling boundary and finite elements suitable for dynamic dam–reservoir interaction is presented herein. This model involves standard finite element idealization of the dam structure displacements and a new symmetric boundary element formulation of the unbounded reservoir domain leading to an equivalent symmetric stiffness matrix for the discretized pressure field. These two basic parts of the computation are directly coupled by imposing an equilibrium condition at the fluid–structure interface, then the resulting algebraic system is reduced by localizing the coupled terms in the global mass matrix such as usually achieved in the added-mass formulation. Finally, the performance and the accuracy of this model are examined by comparing its results to those obtained from three other numerical models.