Mechanism of Suffusion Erosion Phenomenon In Porous Media

Abstract

A major cause of failure of embankment dams is internal erosion that is mostly driven by two different mechanisms, suffusion and concentrated leakage. Suffusion mechanism was studied for a cohesionless soil by laboratory experiments using an especially designed erosion apparatus which was capable of applying simultaneous hydraulic and mechanical loading while the erosion process was monitored. The main novel outcomes of the work are i) a new criterion for detecting the internal erosion initiation, ii) a modified theoretical model, namely the Modified Hydromechanical Envelop (MHE), for encountering the soil in-situ stresses and seepage-induced shear stress on internal erosion initiation and its continuation and iii) a semi-empirical constitutive law of internal erosion where the coefficients of this law were extracted experimentally. The MHE was proposed based on Mohr-Coulomb shear failure criterion. The constitutive law was defined as the rate of removal of mass due to the application of excessive shear stress higher than the material internal erodibility resistance. Importantly, both the initiation and the mass removal rate of suffusion are found to be dependent on the soil in-situ stresses.

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