SPH Modeling of Hydraulics and Erosion of HPTRM Levee

Abstract

Post-Katrina investigations revealed that most earthen levee damage occurred on the levee crest and landwardside slope as a result of either wave overtopping, storm surge overflow, or a combination of both. In this paper, combined wave overtopping and storm surge overflow of a levee embankment strengthened with high performance turf reinforcement mat (HPTRM) system was studied in a purely Lagrangian and meshless approach, twodimensional smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) model. After the SPH model is calibrated with full-scale overtopping test results, the overtopping discharge, flow thickness, flow velocity, average overtopping velocity, shear stress, and soil erosion rate are calculated. New equations are developed for average overtopping discharge. The shear stresses on landward-side slope are calculated and the characteristics of soil loss are given. Equations are also provided to estimate soil loss rate. The range of the application of these equations is discussed.

Application of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) for simulating various geotechnical problems

“…Considering its capability for handling boundary particles, Lagrangian nature and simple formulation has attracted researchers in different branches of engineering to use it in fields such as fluid dynamics, viscous flow, wave over-topping and dam-break flooding [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. Furthermore, its application has been extended to simulating landslide dynamics, slope failures, fluid-solid interactions and associated problems [5,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] and, in the preceding cases which involve large deformations, it performs quite well for replicating real instances [33][34][35][36]. Therefore, given all SPH's positive attributes, its extension to simulating traditional geotechnical engineering problems is a breakthrough in numerical modeling.…”