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Title: Development and validation of a 2D dam break process model

Author
item JIA, YAFEI - University Of Mississippi
item ZHANG, YAOXIN - University Of Mississippi
item Hunt, Sherry

Submitted to: American Society of Civil Engineers Water Resources Conference Proceedings
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/1/2015
Publication Date: 5/17/2015
Citation: Jia, Y., Zhang, Y., Hunt, S. 2015. Development and validation of a 2D dam break process model. In: Proceedings of the ASCE EWRI 2015 World Envi. & Water Res. Congress, May 17-21, 2015, Austin, TX. Online. doi: 10.1061/9780784479162.144.

Interpretive Summary: Flooding due to dam or levee breach can have a harmful impact on the surrounding communities, especially those residents and infrastructure located in the floodplain. Two common embankment breach mechanisms are overtopping and internal erosion. A simplified computational model for dam and/or levee overtopping was developed, and tested with physical model data. Outputs from the model including the breach hydrograph, erosion profile, and breach shape were observed to agree with the physical model data.

Technical Abstract: Flooding due to dam or levee breach often results in detrimental impact on the people and their properties in the flooding zone. The embankment breach process is often caused by overtopping or internal erosion due to excessive water in a reservoir or a river. This study is to develop a practical numerical simulation model for overtopping embankment breach process. To achieve the goal, the key physical-empirical dam breaking mechanism of earth embankment is adopted and implemented into CCHE2D surface flow model. A special function describing the shape of the breaching channel profile is introduced which greatly simplifies the breaching modeling work. The developed model is validated using experiment data. The simulated flooding hydrograph, headcut migration and breaching embankment profiles agree with the observation very well. Because this is a 2D model, it is possible to simulate multiple embankment breaches at the same time which broadens the applicability of the dam-break models significantly.