Long Term Behaviour of Dams, LTBD09

Preface

The Second International Conference on Long Term Behaviour of Dams, LTBD09, takes place at

Graz University of Technology, Austria from October 12 to 13, 2009. The city of Graz, where the

campus of the University of Technology is located, was the European Capital of Culture of the year

2003. The impressive Old Town belongs to the best preserved in Europe and is on the UNESCO

list of World Culture Heritages. Graz has four universities with about 40,000 students. One of them

is Graz University of Technology, a long-established institution of scientific research and teaching

in Austria, which covers the areas of engineering sciences and technical natural sciences.

The Conference LTBD09 is the second international conference based on the scientific and

technical co-operation between Graz University of Technology (Graz, Austria), Vienna University of

Technology (Vienna, Austria), the University of Innsbruck (Innsbruck, Austria), Hohai University

(Nanjing, China) and Tsinghua University (Beijing, China) and it is jointly organized by these five

universities. The First International Conference was launched at Hohai University in 2008 with the

main aim of encouraging an exchange of views between engineers, scientists and operators on

various aspects related to the long term behaviour of dams. Encouraged by the success of the First

Conference the Second Conference aimed to provide another excellent opportunity to present and

exchange experiences and the latest developments related to the design, performance and

rehabilitation of earth dams, rockfill dams and concrete dams including roller compacted and

conventional concrete dams. The high number of abstracts submitted for the conference clearly

shows that this goal has been achieved. The papers included in these proceedings have been

peer-reviewed and selected for presentation at LTBD09. The contributions are divided into the

following five topic areas:

• Methods of Design and Analysis of Dams

• Dam Monitoring and Instrumentation

• Properties of Construction Materials for Dams and their Constitutive Modelling

• Seismic Aspects and Earthquake Analysis

• Dam Safety Assessment, Maintenance, Rehabilitation and Heightening

On behalf of the Organizing Committee I would like to express our profound gratitude to those who

assumed the Auspices over the conference as well as to the members of the International Advisory

Committee and the supporting organizations. I am indebted to the co-chairs of the Organizing

Committee, the chairmen and co-chairmen of the sessions, the sponsors and all other colleagues

for their support. My sincere gratitude goes to Graz University of Technology, and in particular to

Rector Hans Sünkel, for providing an excellent scientific environment. I am grateful for the support

of Christine Vitas, Karin Bauer and Harald Breinhälter from the conference office. Finally I would

like to thank all the conference participants for their interest in the conference and their scientific contributions.

Erich Bauer

Conference Chairman