Abstract
During Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the events thereafter, failures of levees with I-walls caused extensive flooding and damage. The geological background in the New Orleans area and associated uncertainties contributed significantly to the failures. To increase the robustness of the I-walls and levee system and reduce the associated risk of failure, the uncertainties of the system must be incorporated into the design procedures, especially in a geological environment mainly composed of sand deposits. This paper presents a robust optimization procedure to identify optimal designs for the stability of an I-walls and levee system supported on sandy foundation soil in the face of flood hazards. The uncertainties associated with the I-walls and levee system, including the strength parameters of levee and foundation soils and the height of the floodwater behind the I-walls, were considered in a systematic manner. The wall embedded depth, levee crown width, and slope ratio of the levee in the landside were considered as the design parameters. For the robust optimization, the construction cost of the I-walls and levee system and the standard deviation of the failure probability were considered as the design objectives. Finally, the multi-objective optimization resulted in a set of acceptable designs that were presented in a graphical form called Pareto front, which is combined with the knee point concept to provide useful decision aids for selecting the most preferred design that meets both the economics and performance requirements.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by Glenn Department of Civil Engineering, Clemson University. The second author also wishes to acknowledge the support from the National Science Foundation (Award 1818649 and 1900445). The results and opinions expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the National Science Foundation.
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Ravichandran, N., Wang, L. & Rahbari, P. Robust Optimization for Stability of I-Walls and Levee System Resting on Sandy Foundation. KSCE J Civ Eng 26, 57–68 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12205-021-0038-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12205-021-0038-5