Experimental study on the impact of water flow velocity on internal erosion of granite residual soil.

Internal erosion of debris-flow deposits triggered by seepage

Loose wide-grading soils are commonly found in the source areas of debris flows, and in landslides after an earthquake. During rainfall events, fine particles (fines) in the soils gradually migrate downward, and eventually the loss of fines results in an increase in the pore volume of the soil and a reduction in the stability of the soil skeleton, which can lead to subsequent slope failure. To gain more understanding of the fine migration process at the microscopic scale, a 3D discrete element-fluid flow sequentially coupled model is developed, based on Darcy’s Law, to simulate fluid flow through a porous medium and calculate the transportation of soil solids. The erosion model is verified using experimental data. Parametric studies are carried out to investigate the effects of coarse particle size. The results reveal that changes in pore structure caused by fine particle migration can change the local permeability of the material. For the case of the average pore throat diameter to fine particle ratio ( $$J$$ ) of 2.41, changes in local porosity with time from internal erosion in the sample can be divided into four stages: (1) a rapid increase with some variations in porosity, (2) a slow increase in porosity, (3) a rapid increase in porosity, and (4) a steady state with no change in porosity. Not all stages are present for all value of $$J$$ . Stages (1) (2) (4) are present for 2.48 ≤ $$J\le$$ 2.58 and stages (1) (4) are present for $$J$$ ≤ 2.24 and $$J\hspace{0.17em}$$ ≥ 2.74. A sharp increase in the fine’s erosion possibility occurs for a $$J$$ value lies between 2.58 and 2.74. The erosion possibility sensibility shows an exponential relationship with $$J$$ . The model provides an effective and efficient way to investigate the process of pore blockage and internal soil erosion.

In slopes where a mixture of coarse and fine particles is present, the infiltration of rainfall can cause the migration of fine particles. This migration alters the hydraulic properties of the soil and has implications for slope stability. In this study, the slope under investigation is a tailings dam composed of loosely consolidated soil with a wide particle size distribution. Due to rainfall infiltration, fine particles tend to migrate within the voids of the coarse particle framework, leading to changes in hydraulic properties and inducing slope instability. The classical internal erosion constitutive model, known as the Cividini and Gioda erosion criterion, is commonly used to predict the behavior and effects of fine particle erosion in geotechnical engineering. However, certain parameters in this erosion criterion equation, such as long-term density, are challenging to obtain through experiments. To investigate the coupled evolution of seepage and erosion within landfill slopes under the influence of rainfall infiltration and to understand the mechanisms of slope instability, this research assumes the erosion of fine particle suspension and adopts the Worman and Olafsdottir erosion criterion to establish a coupled model of unsaturated seepage and internal erosion. The developed model simulates the coupled response of seepage and erosion in unsaturated landfill slopes under three different rainfall intensities. It is then combined with the infinite slope model to quantitatively analyze the impact of fine particle migration on soil permeability and slope stability. The numerical simulations provide the following findings: The Worman and Olafsdottir erosion criterion, unlike the Cividini and Gioda erosion criterion, only requires the determination of the soil’s gradation curve to estimate the erosion rate. Internal erosion primarily occurs within the leading edge of moisture penetration, accelerating the advancement of the wetting front and reducing slope stability. When the rainfall intensity is lower than the saturated permeability coefficient, the influence of internal erosion can be disregarded. However, under rainfall intensities equal to or greater than the saturated permeability coefficient, considering internal erosion results in a difference in the depth of the wetting front of up to 34.2 cm after 6 h in the R2 scenario. The safety factor without considering internal erosion is 1.12, whereas considering internal erosion yields safety factors between 1.08 and 1.09. In the R3 scenario, the difference in the depth of the wetting front reaches 53.8 cm after 6 h, with a safety factor of 1.12 without considering internal erosion and safety factors between 1.06 and 1.07 when considering internal erosion.

HighlightsThis study provides data from internal erosion tests on four intermediate-scale homogeneous embankment dams.Soil properties influence the breach formation process and breach timing.Results showed that observed erosion rates of the internal flow path varied by several orders of magnitude.Quality control of embankment construction can greatly influence breach development.Abstract. Internal erosion and embankment overtopping are the two most common causes of embankment dam and levee failures and incidents. Internal erosion is the removal of soil material by the flow of water through a continuous defect, cavity, or crack within a compacted fill and/or its foundation. Internal erosion initiates from vulnerabilities within the embankment. The embankment soil material plays a key role in both the erosion process and rate of failure, but characterizing soil properties and how they relate to the rate of failure can be challenging. Soil properties such as texture, density, strength, moisture content, and erodibility can vary greatly; thus, it is important to study the effects of these properties on the breach formation process and breach timing. The USDA Agricultural Research Service performed internal erosion breach experiments on four intermediate-scale homogeneous earthen embankments constructed of soils ranging from a silty sand to a lean clay material. The embankments were constructed to a height of 1.3 m, a top width of 1.8 m, and upstream and downstream slopes of 3(H):1(V). The embankment materials were characterized by water content, density, texture, strength, and erodibility. Erodibility was measured using a jet erosion test (JET) apparatus. A 40 mm diameter, continuous steel pipe was placed through each embankment during construction and removed to form an open-ended void through the embankment connected to the upstream reservoir. The removal of the pipe initiated internal erosion. The objectives of the experiments were to observe the development of the internal erosion process over time and to examine the influence of soil properties on the erosion rate, breach timing, geometry of the breach opening, and breach outflow. The rate of erosion and failure observed in these tests varied by several orders of magnitude, with the silty sand embankment eroding most rapidly and the lean clay embankment with a mean moisture content of 18% dry basis at standard compaction eroding the slowest. These observations were indicative of the soil textures. Although the two lean clay embankments were constructed of similar soils, the difference in erosion rates speak to the importance of quality control (e.g., compaction moisture content) during construction. Soil properties including soil texture, erodibility, and compaction moisture content are key predictors of erosion rate and observed failure. Keywords: Breach, Dam failure, Dams, Embankments, Erodibility, Internal erosion, Levees, Overtopping.

Stony soils are distributed all over the world. The study of their characteristics has gained importance lately due to their increasing use as agricultural soils. The effect that rock fragments exert on the soil hydraulic properties is difficult to measure in situ, and is usually derived from the fine earth properties. However, the corrections used so far do not seem accurate for all types of stony soils. Our objective was to assess the adequacy of estimating the hydraulic properties of a stony soil from the fine earth ones by correcting the latter by the volume occupied by rock fragments. To do that, we first assessed the validity of different approaches for estimating the hydraulic properties of a stone-free and a stony (40% rock fragments) cylinder prepared with samples from the same silt loam soil. The functions relating to the soil hydraulic properties (θ-h, K-h-θ) were estimated by the Wind method and by inverse estimation, using data from an evaporation experiment where the soil water content and pressure head were measured at different soil depths over time. Results from the evaporation experiment were compared to those obtained by applying the equation that corrects fine earth properties by the rock fragments volume. Wind and the Inverse Estimation methods were successfully applied to estimate soil water content and hydraulic conductivity from the stony soil experiment, except for some uncertainties caused by the limited range of suction in which the experiment was conducted. The application of an equation for adjusting the soil water content at different pressure heads (allowing for defining the soil water retention curve, SWRC), and the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity (K) directly from the stone content was not satisfactory. K values obtained from the measured data were higher than those inferred by the correcting equation in the wet range, but decreased much faster with a decreasing pressure head. The use of this equation did therefore not take into account the effect that the creation of lacunar pores by the presence of rock fragments likely exerts on water flow processes. The use of such correction needs therefore to be revised and new approaches are needed for estimating the hydraulic conductivity in stony soils. In relation to SWRC, a new equation to calculate the water content of a stony soil accounting for the influence of possible lacunar pores is proposed.

Suffusion is a particular case of internal erosion due to water seepage through a porous media, which is a main cause of the failure of dam and embankment. There are a lot more to understand due to its inherent complexity. In order to study the development of suffusion, a test device taken into account inflow velocity is designed to simulate the suffusion process in this paper. Three laboratory tests on granite residual soil are presented aimed at investigating the suffusion erosion of fine particles from soil samples subjected to a controlled inflow velocity. The processes of erosion can be observed during the tests. The variation of wetting front, moisture, and erosion amount under different inflow velocities is measured to study the effect of inflow velocity on suffusion within granite residual soil which has high contents of fine particles. As the inflow velocity increases, the wetting speed of the wetting front will increase, and the erosion amount will also increase. The larger inflow velocity would lead to the higher extent of suffusion. The soil column will form preferential channels or fine particle redeposition, which will cause the soil moisture content to fluctuate. The suffusion process in granite residual soil includes fine particles erosion, reposition, pore clogging, and flushing.

Internal erosion caused by broken sewer pipes often leads to ground subsidence in urban area, which is a major risk to public safety and has caused substantial socioeconomic loss. In order to ensure the ground stabilization and the safety of buried pipelines, it is necessary to understand the process of internal erosion around a submerged defective pipe. In this paper, the Dynamic Fluid Mesh (DFM) is coupled with the three-dimensional discrete element method (DEM) to simulate internal erosion in gap-graded soils above a defective pipe. In this fluid-solid coupling scheme, the fluid mesh can be generated according to the soil skeleton formed by coarse particles and updated at regular intervals. Seepage forces are calculated and applied on solid particles in the DEM model. The approach accounts for permeability and porosity changes due to soil skeleton deformation and internal erosion. In this study, some gap-graded soils samples with different size ratio are established. A defective pipe is placed below the sample. After that, different hydraulic gradients are applied to the sample. Fine particles are washed away from the hole in the pipe. The results indicate that the erosion process can be divided into three stages according to changes in the erosion rate. In the initial stage, numerous fine particles are washed away, and the flow rate increases with the increase of eroded particles. Subsequently, the erosion rate decreases and the flow rate tends to reach a steady state. Finally, only a small proportion of particles fall down from the outlets and the erosion rate levels off to zero gradually. Parametric studies show that the increase of hydraulic gradient increase the eroded particle mass. The number of erosion particles from the bottom layer is much larger than those from the upper layers as more fine particles in the upper layers are locked.

Effects of soil heating changes on soil hydraulic properties in Central Chile

Measuring and modeling water content in stony soils

Soil hydraulic properties significantly affect the occurrence and development of collapsing gully walls. The effect of temperature on the hydraulic properties of soil in collapsing gully walls remains unclear. In this study, the hydraulic properties of the red soil layer, the sandy soil layer and the detritus layer in a collapsing gully wall were investigated using the filter paper method, and the soil water retention curves of the different soil layers at 25 and 40 °C were determined. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of temperature on the soil hydraulic properties of different soil layers in collapsing gully walls. The study found that when the water content in the red soil layer and sandy soil layer exceeded 20% and in the detritus layer exceeded 10%, the soil’s matric suction significantly decreased as the temperature increased from 25 to 40 °C. Additionally, the parameters of θs, α, n and m all exhibited a decreasing trend, and the soil water content in the detritus layer was primarily influenced by the temperature change, which resulted in a decrease of 38.10%. The unsaturated hydraulic conductivity of the detritus layer exhibited higher values than that of the sandy layer and red soil layer under identical temperature conditions. Moreover, the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity of the red soil layer, sandy soil layer and detritus layer increased with increasing temperature. It was observed that the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity of the detritus layer increased by 0.18 cm h−1 at a soil water content of 44%. This increase in conductivity was more pronounced than the corresponding changes in the red soil layer and sandy soil layer. An elevated temperature caused the water-holding capacity of the different soil layers of the collapsing gully wall to decrease and the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity to increase. However, the influence of the clay particle content within the soil of the collapsing gully wall rendered the temperature effect more distinct. Therefore, the destabilizing deformation of the soil in the collapsing gully wall during the summer under high temperatures and precipitation may have played a key role in its collapse.

Effects of fractal dimension and water content on the shear strength of red soil in the hilly granitic region of southern China

Modeling of internal erosion using particle size as an extra dimension

In arid and semiarid areas, the availability of reliable data for water retention in relation to soil type, texture, and soil carbonate content is low. It is therefore desirable to explore the interaction between soil hydraulic properties and other physical and chemical properties to estimate the soil water retention curve (SWRC) from easily measured soil parameters. In this study, 72 soil samples were collected from rural areas throughout northwest Syria, covering most of its agroclimatic zones and soil types. Soil water content at different matric potentials and 11 chemical and physical soil properties were determined. A Pearson correlation matrix was computed on which principal component analysis was applied to three soil water contents, −1, −33, and −1500 kPa, and the 11 soil properties. Four principal components (PCs) explained 77% of the variation in the data set. The three soil water contents were highly linked to PC1, which was correlated with the plastic limit, texture, soil carbonate content, and specific surface area. In addition, the soil water content at −1 kPa was also linked to PC4, which was correlated with bulk density. Therefore, from the initial 11 soil properties, seven contributed to the three soil water contents (plastic limit, texture, soil carbonate, specific surface area, and bulk density); the remaining four (organic matter, gravel, cation exchange capacity, and hygroscopic water content) had a negligible influence. Consequently, pedotransfer functions might be estimated using the original seven, from the initial 11, soil properties or their corresponding PCs to estimate the SWRC.

The impact of Microbially Induced Calcite Precipitation (MICP) on sand internal erosion resistance: A microfluidic study

Effects of pre-shearing stress ratio on the mechanical behaviours of gap-graded soils subjected to internal erosion