Break fill-dam simulation using GeoStudio (case study: Safarood earth dam, Kerman)

One of the main reason of earth-dam breaks is inner erosion which is caused by washing fine soil particles and finally lead to seepage inside the dam. Seepage will decrease effective tension in the earth-dam's core and arching phenomena is occurred. More settlement of core than to shell is the consequence of arching and occurrence of cracking. In this paper, GeoStudio software based on finite element scheme was used to simulate numerical modeling of Safarood earth-dam according to two scenarios: (a) after construction; (b) after the first water impounding. Doing calibration and verification processes in SEEP/W and SIGMA/W modules, nonlinear elastic behavior and Mohr-Coulomb's elastic-plastic behavior was determined for core and body of the dam during calibration and verification processes with correlation coefficient of 0.94 and 0.921 between measured and calculated data. In this research, vertical tension distribution, horizontal and vertical displacement, and total tension were calculated and analyzed. After the first water impounding at ratio y/h less than 0.1, hydraulic failure is probable in Safarood earth-dam.