Publications / 2011 Proceedings of the 28th ISARC, Seoul, Korea

Comparison of Two Water Storage Functions of Soil on Pore-Water Pressure of Earth-Filled Dam under Changing Environment

Meen-Wah Gui, Chia-Hsian Wu, Chih-Wei Lu
Pages 538-543 (2011 Proceedings of the 28th ISARC, Seoul, Korea, ISBN 978-89-954572-4-5, ISSN 2413-5844)
Abstract:

Seepage of water through earth fill dam involves both the saturated and unsaturated flows of water. Unsatu- rated flow of water is often neglected because of the complexity required in solving the non-linear partial differential equa- tion involved. This paper presents a seepage analysis of water flows through the partially saturated Renyi-Tan earth fill dam in Taiwan. The governing non-linear partial differential flow equation together with equations representing the characteris- tics of dam materials was solved using a PDE solver. Two water storage functions, which were derived by differentiating the van Genuchten (1980) and Leong and Rahardjo (1997)’s SWCC functions, have been used, and the two sets of results ob- tained have been compared for their sensitivity in seepage analysis of the study dam.

Keywords: Earth-fill Dam, Seepage, Unsaturated Soil, Water Storage Function, PDE