Research of breaking mechanism of overtop earth dams

Abstract

    The breaking mechanism of embankment dams due to overflow depends on many factors, of which two major factors are the filling material properties and the water head on top of dam. This paper presents the content of an experiment to determine breaking mechanism of highly-cohesive soil dam and low-cohesive soil dam in case of overtopping, culculating the erosion rate and confirming the relevance of experimental results to previous theoretical researches.