Risk Analysis of Earthen Embankment

Abstract

newline ABSTRACT newlineAn earthen embankment is a common type of water-retaining structure that serves the newlinecommunity in many ways, like storing water for irrigation, water supply, and protecting people newlinefrom natural disasters like floods. It is a very important engineering structure for which the newlinesafety and long-term stability must be ensured. There are various uncertainties involved during newlinethe analysis of any engineering structure. The sources of uncertainties are generally the newlinevariation of material properties throughout the domain of interest, loadings, estimation newlineprocedure, mechanical and manual errors, etc. The deterministic analysis does not consider newlineuncertainties that originate due to various factors such as spatial variability in properties of soil, newlinemechanical and human measurement errors, etc. The probabilistic analysis considers these newlineuncertainties during analysis. Therefore, in recent years, probabilistic analysis has become an newlineintegral part of any design work of engineering structures to establish its success by considering newlinethe various uncertainties involved in the system. The probabilistic analysis is performed in the newlinepresent work using Monte Carlo and Subset Simulation methods with UPSS 3.0 module, newlinedeveloped in an MS-Excel spreadsheet environment. The probabilistic piping analysis and newlineprobabilistic slope stability analysis results are reported for investigating the safety and longand#65534;term stability of earthen embankment. newlineIn the present work, the probabilistic piping analyses of an isotropic as well as an newlineanisotropic earthen embankment have been performed. The piping failure occurs in the newlineembankment when the seepage velocity exceeds the critical seepage velocity or exit gradient newlineexceeds the critical hydraulic gradient within the embankment. The hydraulic permeability of newlinesoil is considered as spatially variable random parameter for performing the probabilistic newlinepiping analysis. The Markov correlation function is used to establish the correlation of newlinehydraulic permeability within the emba