Inversion of the Seepage Parameters of Earth/Rockfill Dams Considering the Coupling Effect of Seepage and Thermal Transfer

Abstract

The estimation of inversion parameters for seepage models is very important for ensuring the safety of earth/rockfill dams. In most existing studies, only hydraulic characteristics have been determined based on seepage pressure or discharge observation information, which may result in inversion results that do not accurately characterize the true properties of dam materials. In this paper, an advanced parameter inversion method considering the coupling effect of seepage and thermal transfer is proposed. A seepage–thermal transfer coupled finite element model is established, and hydraulic head and temperature data of monitoring points are obtained through the forward simulation method. The entropy weight (EW) method is used to preprocess the hydraulic head and temperature data, and a universal kriging (UK) surrogate model is established to replace the time-consuming finite element simulations. The multi-island genetic algorithm (MIGA) is applied to find the optimal solution, thereby obtaining the inversion results. The effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed method are verified through laboratory tests involving seepage and thermal transfer monitoring of a core rockfill dam. Joint inversion based on temperature and hydraulic head observation information can result in improvement in the accuracy of the inversion results.