The technical investigation of earthquake-induced reservoir earth dam damages in Sichuan Province was carried out after M 8.0 Whenchuan earthquake happening on May 12
2008.Ninety six damaged reservoir earth dams with complete information were selected as the subjects investigated.The simple 2D nonlinear dynamic analyses of 96 earth dams were conducted.The equivalent linear model was used to simulate the dynamic nonlinearity of the dam soils.Three representative Wenchuan earthquake records with three levels peak acceleration were taken as the input waves.The dynamic responses including the acceleration amplification factor and the maximum dynamic shear stress of 96 earth dams were analyzed
and the empirical relationships between dynamic response of earth dams and their geometries were discussed. The results show that the acceleration amplification factor and the maximum dynamic shear stress decrease with increase of aspect ratio and upstream slope ratio.With increase of the dam height
the dynamic responses increase.Additionally
the relationships between dynamic response of earth dams and their geometries are related to the characteristics of the input earthquake motion.