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