Effect of Fill Size on the Stability of Barrier Dams

Abstract

The fills of barrier dams commonly result from high-speed landslides debris flow. In this paper, four model tests were conducted to study the effect of fill size on the stability of barrier dams. The failure time, failure mode, pore pressures and earth pressures were then observed and analyzed. The results show that barrier dams composed of coarse-grains or well-graded fills are more stable than those composed of fine-grained fills; coarse-grain-dams are more sensitive to the rising of water level than fine-grain-dams; the failure mode of coarse-grain-dams is usually overflowing-erosion and the barrier dams usually fail from the top of dams; the failure mode of fine-grain-dams is sliding and the barrier dams fail initially from the slope downstream.

Effects of Grain Size Distribution on Landslide Dam Breaching—Insights From Recent Cases in China

“…Of 73 failed landslide dams (Costa and Schuster, 1988), 85% lasted less than 1 year, and 27% lasted less than 1 day. Similar conclusions have been drawn after statistical analyses of 204, 276, and 352 landslide dams, respectively (Shi et al, 2011;Peng and Zhang, 2012;Shen et al, 2020). Once an outburst of landslide dams occurs, massive flooding may occur in a short time, posing a catastrophic threat to the lives and properties of downstream residents.…”

Landslide dam deformation analysis under aftershocks using large-scale shaking table tests measured by videogrammetric technique

“…More than 849 aftershocks with magnitudes higher than Ms 4.0 occurred after the Wenchuan earthquake by 12 March, 2012 (Shen et al, 2013). There are numbers of studies on the static behaviors of landslide dams, for instance, stability analysis, failure modes, and breach parameters (e.g., Schuster, 1988, 1991;Korup, 2002;Ermini and Casagli, 2003;Davies et al, 2007;Shi et al, 2011;Peng and Zhang, 2012). However, the researches on dynamic behaviors of landslide dams are seldom found.…”