Evaluation of Scaling Effects in Levee and Dam Breach Simulations Using Simplified and Advanced Models

Abstract Submission: To assess the risks of earthen dam and levee failures, numerous studies have investigated breaching processes, leading to the development of models to predict breach geometry and outflow. A major challenge in dam break and levee breach modeling is the strong coupling between geotechnical and hydraulic processes. Simplified models, like DLBreach, a specialized physically-based breach estimation tool, are commonly utilized for their ease of use and speed, but they have several limitation. More advanced models, like Anura3D -an open-source geotechnical and hydraulic numerical modeling tool based on the Material Point Method, can be used to account for complex hydraulic and geotechnical interactions but are computationally costly and impractical for prototype-scale simulations. In this study, we performed a series of overtopping simulations using both Anura3D and DLBreach for some test cases to identify the key differences in the resulting geometry and outflow hydrographs. We first conducted fixed-bed dam-break flow simulations on a two-dimensional domain using the single-point formulation of Anura3D. These simulations were compared with in-house dam-break flow experiments conducted at the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) National Sedimentation Laboratory in Oxford, Mississippi, and with two other studies from the literature. Then, we performed a large number of levee overtopping simulations with varying hydraulic conditions and levee properties using DLBreach. We compared some of the selected scenarios with double-point Anura3D simulations using an erodible cohesive levee. Finally, additional Anura3D simulations were carried out to evaluate how different processes scale with levee geometry and gravity. Preliminary findings will be presented.

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