A hydrodynamic model of an embankment breaching due to overtopping flow using FLOW-3D

Abstract

Embankment dam failures are concerning to many people in the society today, including dam engineers, federal, state, and local officials. The effects of dam failure may cause more harm than good; leading to the losses of lives, properties being damage, economic and environmental downfall. Embankment dam breaching is a complex process between hydraulics and soil erosion processes; until today it still requires more researches to be done. Many factors involved in embankment breaching such as cohesiveness of embankment material, compactness of the embankment soil material, height of the dam and slope of the dam. Through the help of simulation techniques such as computational fluid dynamics, it is possible to understand the behaviour of embankment breaching processes. In this research, modelling of embankment breaching with the aid of FLOW-3D allow us to open doors to plenty of experiments to breaching in the near future. This research focuses in analysing and comparing hydrodynamic parameters; breach outflow hydrograph, peak outflow rate Qp and failure time iy, and geometric parameters; breach depth Hb, and top breach width Bt, of the modelling breached embankment for different sediment diameter and inflow rates. Moreover, the research also investigates the velocity magnitude and breach width during the embankment breaching process.