In CFRDs, settlements of the rockfill during and after construction can cause deformation and cracking of the concrete face. To prevent this, empirical rules have been formulated for controlling grading of the rockfill and compaction conditions. However, as higher and higher CFRDs are built in the world, numerical analysis is necessary to validate the empirical rules. Due to the complex physical mechanisms involved in the interaction of the different structural elements in a CFRD, and the need to consider 3D effects, there are not many comprehensive examples of numerical analysis of CFRDs. This has motivated the ICOLD Committee on Computational Aspects of Analysis and Design of Dams to propose the numerical analysis of a CFRD as one of the themes for the 10th Benchmark Workshop on Numerical Analysis of Dams [1]. Object of this benchmark is the Mohale dam in Lesotho, South-Africa. This is a 145 m high CFRD, with a crest length of 600 m, a concrete face surface of 73400 m² and a total fill volume of approximately 7.5 million m³. The dam was built of basalt rockfill. After the reservoir was completely impounded, significant dam movements occurred and cracks developed in the concrete face, which caused leakage. Information provided in [1] is not sufficient for a quantitative comparison of numerical predictions and actual deformation and crack status in the Mohale dam. Nevertheless, this exercise has offered the authors the possibility to test the capability of the finite element package DIANA [2] to model the behaviour of CFRDs.  

混凝土面板堆石坝施工时和施工后产生的填石沉降可导致混凝土面变形开裂。为防止此种情况发生，经验做法是控制填石坡度和压实条件。然而，随着世界上混凝土面板堆石坝高度的不断增加，经验做法必须得到数值分析的验证。由于混凝土面板堆石坝内不同结构元件之间的相互作用涉及到综合物理机制，考虑到三维立体效果，混凝土面板堆石坝全面综合数值分析的案例并不多见。这一情况促使国际大坝委员会（ICOLD）大坝设计计算分析专委会将混凝土面板堆石坝数值分析列为第10届大坝数值分析基准研讨会议题之一[1]。该基准的对象便是南非莱索托Mohale大坝。它是一座145m高的混凝土面板堆石坝，坝顶长度600m，混凝土表面积73400m²，填方总量约为750万m³。大坝填石为玄武岩 。. 水库完全蓄水后，大坝发生显著位移，混凝土面出现裂缝，导致渗漏。文献[1]提供的资料不足以对数值预测和Mohale大坝实际变形和开裂情况进行定量比较。但此项应用使作者得以检验有限元分析软件DIANA[2]模拟混凝土面板堆石坝运行的能力专业翻译。  

The finite element model of the dam body and the foundation is shown in Figure 1. The dam body is modelled with 4-node tetrahedral elements with 6 m edge size. This element size is chosen for limiting the number of degrees of freedom in the model. The total number of elements in the dam body is 184812, and the number of nodes is 36417. The foundation is modelled with 260900 elements, with 82321 nodes. The nodes at the outer and bottom surfaces of the foundation are constrained along the normal to the surface. Figure 2 shows the different construction stages of the dam body.

坝体与坝基有限元素模型如图1所示。坝体建模采用4结点四面体元，边长6米。该元素尺寸可限制模型自由度的数量。坝体内元素总数为184812，结点36417个。坝基建模使用260900个元素，82321处结点。坝基外表面和底面处的结点沿法线约束到表面上。图2显示坝体的不同施工阶段上海翻译公司。