An earth dam and a dike is one kind of hydraulic construction, which is built with highly compacted earth and can be used for the purpose of containing water in a reservoir to secure the water supply, and in flood control. Earth dam and dike can be a safety issue, as it can experience catastrophic destruction due to the slope failure caused by various factors, such as construction materials, vegetation, atmospheric conditions and so on. The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of the saturation degree (or water content) on the stability of earth dam and dikes under the consideration of precipitation and vegetation with the program PCSiWaPro® (developed at the Technical University of Dresden, Institute of Waste Management and Contaminated Site Treatment).
The preliminary tests on a physical model have shown that the security and stability has been already severely compromised in the partially saturated region, i.e. the area above the seepage line was in great danger and it came quickly to landslides on the air side. Before the stability analysis could be done for those unsaturated zones, water flow processes and water saturation in the saturated and partially saturated soil area were simulated using the simulation program PCSiWaPro® under transient boundary conditions. The integration of a weather generator into PCSiWaPro® allows a transient water flow calculation with respect to atmospheric conditions (precipitation, evaporation, daily mean temperature and sunshine duration) and removal of water by plant roots and leaves. Finally, with the Program PCSiWaPro® and Gmsh, a 2D dynamic model of water content distribution in the earth dam could be built, incorporating information of not only climate parameters and vegetation but also geometry, soil properties, geohydraulic conditions and time-dependent boundary conditions. The simulation results of several scenarios both in the laboratory and in the field of China and Germany clearly demonstrated that the accordance between measured values and calculated values for water content using the simulation program PCSiWaPro® was very good.
In addition, two kinds of stability analysis models (the Infinite Slope Model and the BISHOP’S Model, one kind of the limit equilibrium method), which were both developed from the old Mohr-Coulomb Model, have been improved with the additional consideration of root reinforcement in the upper layer of the slope and soil water in the earth slope. The Infinite Slope Model has been proved to be mainly applied for the surficial landslide; while the BISHOP’S Model is more responsible for the deeper slip landslide forecasting. Then based on the PCSiWaPro® simulation result of water content in the unsaturated slope in the earth bodies from two study sites, Fs (safety of factor) calculation for those earth slopes was derived providing a sufficient forecasting system for the slope-failure-flood. The results have been compared with the calculated Fs values from the old models (without consideration of the influence of water content change on the slope stability) to study how significantly water content increased the risk of slope landslides.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:29275 |
| Date | 02 December 2015 |
| Creators | Guo, Jinxing |
| Contributors | Graeber, Peter-Wolfgang, Liedl, Rudolf, Werner, Peter, Nishigaki, Makoto, Technische Universität Dresden |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | doc-type:doctoralThesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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