Physical modeling of lateral dike breaching due to overtopping

Dikes are commonly used as defense structures for river flow channelization, protecting population and property from floods and against lateral riverbed migration. However, the aging of these structures, combined with their increased vulnerability to extreme hydrological events may cause the dikes to breach, and subsequently to break. Furthermore, statistics show that flow overtopping is the main cause of dike failure, which emphasizes the need to understand thoroughly the process of breaching. Indeed, from a risk management perspective it is particularly important to have a detailed understanding of the mechanisms (e.g. internal erosion, overtopping erosion) underlying the formation of breaches due to overtopping and reliable information on flows passing through them. Conversely, the current knowledge of breaching mechanisms remains fragmented, especially because dike failure involves complex interactions between flows, materials of the structure, soil and foundations. The existing studies have addressed partially these interactions as the considered idealized dikes were generally homogenous, the piping erosion unaccounted for and the overtopping replicated in a dam-break like configuration. Yet, river embankments are subjected to high flow velocities parallel to the direction of the dike and to flow in the floodplain, which highly influence the shape of the breach and its evolution. The objective of the present work is to fill this gap. A laboratory experimental investigation is planned in the National Laboratory for Hydraulics and Environment (LNHE) of EDF R&D (France) and in the research group Hydraulics in Environmental and Civil Engineering (HECE) of the University of Liege (Belgium), reproducing realistic configurations of river dikes, accounting for the tangential flow in both main channel and floodplain. It enables thus the assessment of, on the one hand, the effect of the increase of the water level, and on the other hand, the influence of waves. The laboratory tests also consider the effect of a surface layer and composition of the dike core by testing different material mixtures. Geometry and composition of the idealized dikes are representative of typical field dikes, based on the similarity theory.