Experimental investigation into rockfill dam failure initiation by overtopping

Nasrin Javadi and Tew-Fik Mahdi ()

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2014, vol. 74, issue 2, 623-637

Abstract: Rockfill is the most abundant building material. It is often used for water retention under different contexts, such as dams, embankments or drainage systems. Climate change may cause water levels to rise in reservoirs. As rockfill structures are not able to resist strong overtopping flow, rising water levels will constitute a danger for rockfill dam stability as well as for people living nearby. This work is aimed at the development of an empirical formula that enables calculation of the critical water level of overflow at the crest from the geometrical and physical parameters of a dam. To achieve these objectives, several experimental tests on a rockfill dam model with two different impervious cores, moraine with a sand filter and an empty wooden formwork, were conducted in a hydraulic channel at the hydro-environmental laboratory at École Polytechnique de Montréal. The purpose of these tests was to study the initiation of a riprap failure under the influence of different variables, such as rock size, riprap bank, downstream side slope and bed slope. Results showed linear trends between the critical water level and both the downstream side slope and bed slope. Also, a power trend was observed between the critical level and riprap grain size. A formula that gives the critical overtopping water level was developed from these results. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Keywords: Laboratory tests; Initiation of dam failure; Overtopping level; Critical hydraulic gradient (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11069-014-1201-9 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:74:y:2014:i:2:p:623-637

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-014-1201-9

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().