Water‐driven fracture propagation is a fundamental issue in the failure analysis of cracked concrete gravity dams. In the present paper, a poromechanical‐damage–based model is proposed to study the water‐fracture interaction in saturated porous media in order to highlight the importance of considering the presence of the pressurized water in propagating fractures. The solid behavior is described by a plastic damage model. The crack openings computation is performed using a post‐processing method combined with the fracture energy regularization concept. The hydraulic behavior is governed by Darcy's law for the un‐cracked material. After cracking, the flow through fracture is driven by the cubic law and the material permeability is increased as the crack propagates. The validations are performed on a wedge splitting test. The failure analysis of a concrete gravity dam under hydraulic fracturing shows that considering the water pressure in cracks leads to deeper and larger fracture propagation.

In seismic zones, arch dames are the most feasible when the geology and the integration of ancillary structures allow it. Arch dams postpone the hydrostatic push on the foundation by bows (under compression). It is the slenderness of the valley, the geometry of the arch, and the contrast of rigidity between the concrete and the rock that determine the behavior of the structure. The stability of this type of dam differs essentially from that of gravity dams, which results from a certain inequality between the flow of water and the weight. An intermediate design combination between the two; gravity and arch profiles is the arch-gravity dam, which takes advantages of each type of dam. The failure of this type of structure under earthquakes is generally accompanied by dramatic damage on both human and material sides. Consequently, it is important to study in a reliable and precise way their dynamic behavior considering the impact of the geology of the site, which plays an important role on the profile to be adapted and on the seismic response of the structure. The purpose of this paper is to carry out a comparative analysis between the gravity dam response and the single and double curvature arch dam response with variable site conditions. A finite element numerical modeling using the Cast3M code is performed to analyze and evaluate the vulnerability of each profile design. Proportionality is deduced between the displacement of the crest and the rock type on the one hand, and between the crack opening evolution and the rock deformation modulus, on the other hand.