Abstract: High arch dam piers experience intense vibrations during flood discharge, which could lead to certain fatigue damage to the structure or even a failure. A thorough understanding of their dynamic behaviors and the mechanisms of discharge vibration is essential to ensuring safe dam operation. This paper presents a new method for analyzing the transmission path of discharge vibration in high arch dam piers based on model experiments. We construct a water elastic model for the pier of a high arch dam based on the theory of water elastic model vibration test, and collect vibration acceleration information from different parts of the pier. Then, the transfer entropy method is used to analyze the vibration transmission paths in the pier. We have proved the use of transfer entropy allows accurate capture of the energy flow and transmission direction in complex vibration systems, suitable for analysis of the vibration transmission paths in the pier. The results indicate that in a pier structure, vibration transmission starts from three major positions－the top, bottom, and hinged beams on the inner pier side wall; the middle part of this wall and the tail of the gate in the flow are two major zones for vibration to gather. This study would be useful theoretically and practically for the design and maintenance of high arch dam piers.

Key words: pier, model test, discharge vibration, transfer entropy, vibration transmission paths