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Landslide dam failure and flood hydraulics. Part I: experimental investigation

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Abstract

Landslide dam failure can trigger catastrophic flooding in the downstream. However, field observation of such flooding is rarely available, while laboratory experimental studies are sparse. The mechanism of landslide dam failure and the flood has so far remained insufficiently understood. Here, we present an experimental investigation of landslide dam failure and the flood. A total of 28 runs of experiments are carried out in a flume of 80 m × 1.2 m × 0.8 m, with differing inflow discharge, dam composition, dam geometry, and initial breach dimension. An array of twelve automatic water-level probes is deployed to measure the stage hydrographs along the flume, and the video recording of the dam failure processes facilitates an estimation of the widening of initial breach. Under the present experimental conditions with dams composed of homogeneous materials, landslide dam failure is primarily caused by erosion of overtopping flow, and lateral mass collapse is also considerable during the cause of breach widening. Cohesive clay may act to mitigate the seepage through the dam and thus its subsidence and appreciably modulate the dam failure process and the flood. However, the impacts of clay may be readily overwhelmed by a large inflow discharge and initial breach. Gravels in the dam may appreciably depress the rate of the dam failure process and thus modify the flood. The present work provides new experimental data set for testing mathematical models of the flood flow due to landslide dam failure.

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Abbreviations

H :

Initial dam height (cm)

H b :

Depth of initial breach (cm)

H d :

Initial static water depth at downstream of the dam (cm)

H f :

Maximum residual thickness upon the completion of the dam failure (cm)

H u :

Initial static water depth at upstream of the dam (cm)

Q :

Inflow discharge from the far upstream (m3/s)

S1, S2:

Initial upstream and downstream slopes of the dam (−)

t :

Time (s)

T :

Time from the onset to the completion of the dam failure (s)

T b :

Time for the stage in front of the dam to rise up to the peak stage (s)

T bg :

Time for the initial breach to grow laterally to the full width of the channel (s)

V :

Dam volume (m3)

W :

Initial width of the dam crest (cm)

W b :

Base width of initial breach (cm)

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Acknowledgments

This investigation is funded by National Key Basic Research and Development Program (973 Program) of China (Grant No. 2007CB714106), and Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 10932012, 10972164).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Zhixian Cao

  2. School of the Built Environment, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK

    Zhixian Cao & Gareth Pender

  3. Yangtze River Waterway Research Institute, Wuhan, China

    Zhiyuan Yue

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  1. Zhixian Cao
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  2. Zhiyuan Yue
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  3. Gareth Pender
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Correspondence to Zhixian Cao.

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Cao, Z., Yue, Z. & Pender, G. Landslide dam failure and flood hydraulics. Part I: experimental investigation. Nat Hazards 59, 1003–1019 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-011-9814-8

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