Piping flow erosion in dike: quantifying the failure time

Abstract

The piping flow erosion process, involving the enlargement of a continuous tunnel between upstream and downstream, is a major cause of dike break. Such a pipe can be imputed to roots or burrows. The coefficient of erosion must be known in order to estimate the remaining time to failure and to downstream flood. The Hole Erosion test is a laboratory experiment especially suited to estimate a priori this geotechnical parameter. We propose therefore simplified expressions for the remaining time to breaching accounting for this erosion parameter.