Development of Decision-Making Tools for Regulating Heavy Vehicle Passage on Embankment Dams

Abstract Embankment dams are frequently located in areas with specialized transportation needs, such as mining or heavy equipment transport. In remote northern regions with limited road infrastructure, utilizing dam crests for heavy vehicle circulation can significantly reduce travel times and costs, offering economic and environmental benefits such as lower fuel consumption and the avoidance of bridge construction. It is critical to establish appropriate tolerance criteria to ensure safe vehicle loads on the dam crest. The present study proposes a decision-making framework to regulate heavy vehicle passage across embankment dams based on permanent deformation and plastic strain rate criteria in the dam's core. The methodology was developed using field instrumentation data from three embankment dams to define representative modeling parameters. The proposed approach is then applied to a fourth embankment dam through a working example to demonstrate its practical implementation. The results show that the framework enables dam owners and operators to identify allowable vehicle loads and traffic scenarios within acceptable deformation limits, providing a practical decision-support framework that can be adapted to other embankment dams with site-specific inputs and engineering judgment.