Prediction of Spatio-temporal Permeability in Granular Suffusive Soils Using Discrete Element Modeling

Water retaining structures such as earth dams hold majority of country’s water resources, and are the lifeblood of our community and agricultural economy. An unseen and yet critical phenomenon threatening the stability of these structures is internal erosion, which is responsible for about 46% of all embankment dam failures. The risk management related to volumetric erosion, named suffusion, calls the development of a numerical model that allows the prediction of the transient evolution of erosion. Such model requires the development of a new relationship that can describe the evolution of the local permeability during the suffusion process including the evolutions of the particle size distribution and the constriction size distribution that describe the soil’s micro-structure. The improved fundamental understanding of internal erosion will also help improve the state of the art in designing granular filters in dams.

Faculty Supervisor:

Wenbo Zheng

Student:

Partner:

The University of Queensland

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Education

University:

University of Northern British Columbia

Program: