Soil Erosion Morphology of An Embankment Failure

Abstract

Embankments are essential infrastructure, are built to provide flood control. It also presents risks to property and life due to their potential to fail and cause catastrophic flooding. To mitigate these risks, authorities and regulators need to carefully analyse and inspect dams to identify potential failure modes and protect against them. This paper presents an embankment failure morphology, and the amount of erosion occurred due to overtopping flow. The breached morphology is analysed for an embankment slope of 1V:3H, using a medium sand grain size of non-cohesive soil in the laboratory. The embankment height is 0.1 m and tested with inflows rate of Q = 0.8 ×10−3 m3/s. Experimental results showed that the breached peak discharge is affected by the morphology of the embankment breached. The volume lost calculation of the embankment erosion was calculated using SURFER 8, indicating the volume of 0.0096 m3 with the peak breached discharge of 3.63 x 10−3 m3/s. The study concludes that the embankment volume lost is about 41%, and the characteristics of the embankment failures influence its morphology patterns.