LAUSR

Deformation monitoring is an important aspect of safety control for concrete dams. Deformation monitoring models (such as statistical models and hybrid models) are extensively applied to predict concrete dam deformation and derive confidence interval of normal deformation for anomaly detection. Deformation monitoring models for concrete dams mainly consist of hydrostatic component, temperature component, and aging component. The optimum parameters of individual components are simultaneously determined by least square method for monitoring data fitting. Thus, significant over-fitting of deformation monitoring models may be induced by mutual compensation among the parameters of model components. In this paper, the Separate Modeling Technique (SMT) is proposed for mitigating the over-fitting problem of deformation monitoring models for concrete dams. Firstly, the Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) is adopted to extract and visualize the aging component of displacement sequence. Proper mathematical formulation of the aging component can be established, and the problem of improperly presupposing the mathematical form of aging component in the process of constructing traditional deformation monitoring models is well addressed. In this study, the hydrostatic component is represented by the Hybrid Response Surface (HRS), which is formulated using numerical simulation with varying water levels and material parameters. The displacement variation caused by water level fluctuation is identified in terms of isothermal conditions and is used to calibrate the material parameters in the HRS. The temperature component is separated through subtracting the hydrostatic and aging components from displacement time series and then is expressed with proper mathematical formulations. Finally, hybrid models for displacement monitoring of concrete dams are established by combining the separately formulated components. The Separate modeling technique is applied to formulate crest displacement of the YL concrete gravity dam. The false alarm rate of displacement monitoring and a new model selection criterion (namely over-fitting coefficient) are adopted to compare various deformation monitoring models. It is shown that the over-fitting levels of deformation monitoring models can be effectively reduced using the SMT. The deformation monitoring models constructed with the SMT are of better accuracy in displacement prediction and present no false alarm of displacement monitoring for the tested period.