Numerical investigation into the effect of cavity size and location on stability of earth dams

Alateya, H; Ahangar Asr, A

Abstract

Numerical investigations performed to study the effect of the presence of cavities on stability of slopes considering rapid draw down conditions. The aim of the investigation is was to study the influence of different factors (such as diameter and location of the cavities in horizontal and vertical directions). Numerical models were used to estimate slope stability of earth dam considering the effect of cavities in subsoil using PLAXIS 2D software. The results of the analysis indicated that the presence of cavities decreases the stability of upstream facer extremely for all considered locations for the cavities in both directions (horizontal and vertical). The numerical results also demonstrated that increasing the size of cavities lead to decreasing the value of safety factor, until it drops to values less than the required value for the earth dam under rapid drawdown conditions to be considered stable.

Citation

Alateya, H., & Ahangar Asr, A. Numerical investigation into the effect of cavity size and location on stability of earth dams. Presented at 25th UKACM Conference on Computational Mechanics, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom

• Presentation Conference Type: Other
• Conference Name: 25th UKACM Conference on Computational Mechanics
• Conference Location: University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom
• Publication Date: Apr 12, 2017
• Deposit Date: Dec 8, 2017
• Publisher URL: http://ukacm2017.ukacm.org/proceedings/
• Related Public URLs: http://ukacm2017.ukacm.org/
• Additional Information: Event Type : Conference