摘要：Abstract
Background
Landslide dams formed by rock avalanche processes usually fail by seepage erosion. This has been related to the complex sedimentological characteristics of rock avalanche dams which are mostly dominated by fragmented and pulverized materials. This paper presents a comprehensive experimental programme which evaluates the critical hydraulic and geometrical conditions for seepage-induced failure of landslide dams. The experiments were conducted in a flume tank specifically designed to monitor time-dependent transient changes in pore-water pressures within the unsaturated dam materials under steady-state seepage. Dam models of different geometries were built with either mixed or homogeneous materials. Two critical hydraulic gradients corresponding to the onset of seepage erosion initiation and collapse of the dam crest were determined for different upstream inflow rates, antecedent moisture contents, compactive efforts, grain size ranges, and dam geometries.
Results
Two major types of dam failure were identified: Type I and Type II. These were further subdivided into minor failure processes which include exfiltration, sapping, downstream toe bifurcation, and undermining of the downstream face. The critical hydraulic gradients for seepage erosion initiation varied from 0.042 to 0.147. Experiments conducted with the mixed materials indicate that the critical hydraulic gradients for collapse of the dam crest increased with an increase in uniformity coefficient.
Conclusions
The deformation behaviour of the dams was significantly influenced by particle density, pore geometry, hydraulic conductivity, and the amount of gravel and pebbles present in the materials. The results indicate that the critical seepage velocity for failure of the dams decreased with an increase in downstream slope angle, but increased with an increase in pore geometry, dam height, dam crest width, upstream inflow rate, and antecedent moisture content.
关键词：KeywordsEnExfiltrationSappingHydraulic gradientCritical seepage velocityWetting front propagationDownstream slope saturation
