• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.25-33
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• 2018

Piping is one of the most frequently occurring collapse type of a levee, and is often caused by roofing (backward erosion piping) at the ground-structure interface. Roofing is generally evaluated using creep ratio. However, creep ratio does not take into account the characteristics of the ground-structure interface. In this study, the roofing risk was investigated by using model test and numerical analysis considering the ground-structure interface characteristics. In the model test, it was confirmed that the piping potential decreased as the interface roughness increased, and this was applied to the numerical analysis. Existing numerical methods can not adequately simulate the particle behavior at the ground-structure interface because only the water level difference is considered. In this paper, particle behavior at the interface was investigated by performing seepage analysis and then, carrying out particle analysis technique simulating the boundary condition of the ground-structure interface. Analysis results have shown that the roofing resistance decreases as the ground-structure interface roughness decreases.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.55-62
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• 2023

Internal erosion is one of the main causes of levee damage and collapse, and representative of this is backward erosion piping. This type of internal erosion accounts for one-third of the damage to levees, meaning it is important to predict and prevent it. In this work, experiments were conducted with the aim of detecting piping in advance by using a tracer. Experiments were undertaken by changing the head difference, soil diameter, and the installation of the cutoff wall. A tracer was injected twice, once at the beginning of the experiment and once after the piping occurred. A key finding was that the piping process significantly affectedthe concentration variation of the tracer in a soil layer. Hence, a tracer concentration curve monitored at downstream could provide information about piping occurrence. It is expected that the results of this study can be used to prevent levee damage and collapse caused by piping.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.53-64
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• 2013

Resistivity monitoring is based on the fact that a change in the porosity leads to the changes in water content and fine particles, which alter the electrical resistivity. At every embankment dam, internal erosion always occurs as time passes. The internal erosion generally develops into piping over a long time by backward erosion and concentrated leak, and finally leads to dam failure. Resistivity is known to be very sensitive to the changes in porosity in embankment dams. Thus resistivity monitoring is a reasonable method to find out the leakage zone. However, resistivity is strongly influenced by seasonal variation of temperature, TDS of reservoir water and water level. In this paper. we first installed electrodes permanently at the center of the crest. The electrical resistivity monitoring data was acquired every 6 hours from Apr. 3, 2011 to July. 31, 2012. To analyze the characteristics of monitoring data, each resistivity data was calculated from up to 2,950 data sets. The result indicated a seasonal resistivity variation due to related temperature. Finally, a quantitative method to estimate porosities of the embankment dam from the resistivity monitoring data was analyzed. The applicability and reliability were verified and the importance of electrical resistivity monitoring for obtaining reliable result was emphasized.