Simulating the 1976 Teton Dam Failure using Geoclaw and HEC-RAS and comparing with Historical Observations

Abstract

GeoClaw results within acceptable range for dam failure downstream modeling with comparison to historical data and HEC-RAS results.• Use of Lagrangian gauges to track downstream eddying in GeoClaw software.• Teton Dam failure benchmark problem used for comparison of software and prepared for future dam failure modeling applications.

GeoFlood: Computational Model for Overland Flooding

“…The results for high-water marks and flood arrival times at nine-gauge locations were validated against field data and experimental results from a scaled laboratory model [27,28]. [29] further tested GeoClaw's overland flooding capabilities by extending it to the simulation of the 1976 Teton dam rupture. The results were in agreement with historical observations as well as HEC-RAS simulations of the same event.…”

“…HEC-RAS is widely used in government and industry for levee breach analysis and floodplain modeling and is considered the industry standard for floodplain modeling [5]. It has been used extensively to model dam break simulations, including the 1976 Teton dam break simulation [29], the 2006 Ukai dam flood simulation [31], and the Temenggor dam break analysis simulation [32], etc. In this paper, we compare GeoFlood and GeoClaw results with those computed using the Eulerian-Lagrangian SWE solver (SWE-ELM) available in HEC-RAS 6.3.1.…”