Introduction

The general problem being look at in this project is the seepage of water through an earthen dam.
In the engineering community seepage through dams is very important because there could be an
increase in pore pressure that reduces the factor of safety causing the dam to fail. These failures
have occurred in the past such as the Teton earthen dam located in the USA state Idaho. It failed
on June 5, 1976; releasing nearly 300,000 acre feet of water that flooded farmland and towns
downstream with the eventual loss of 14 lives and with a cost estimated to be nearly $1 billion
(Balloffet and Scheffler 1982). To reduce the risk of events like this from occurring is why
seepage analysis for a dam is required.
This problem revolves around the 2D flow of water through a soil media which corresponded to
Darcy laws law represented as a Laplace equation

Casagrande Calculation
In analysing seepage problems by numerical methods for the phreatic surface an approximated
head values are used to compute the unknown values of internal the elements. These values for
the peratic surface may be in correct because the hydraulic head for flow continuity may not be
met; that is qin =qout. q(flow) is related to head by
q= ki A; where k =hydraulic conductivity
i= hydraulic gradient (difference between heads h1=h2)

A= cross sectional area (z x x)

In mesh grid the q in terms of head h (i,j) for hydraulic head for flow continuity =
h(i,j+1) + 2(i+1,j) +2h(i,j-1) -4h(i,j) = 0
If the above equation is not zero that value is taken as R and the initial head values along the
phreatic surface are now taken as initial value R/4 and the process is repeated until a value
closer to zero is met. Due the time limitation in developing the code to obtain the unknown head
values we use the Casagrande method to obtain the phreatic surface line is it observed to be one
of the better approximation maethod for calculating the pheric surface (Abdul, Kashyap and Hari
2007).

To enclose domain required to solve the problem, the phreatic surface within the dam needs to be
calculated. This is needed to represent the flow of water with the earthen dam. This is carried out
before discretising the domain. The phreatic surface is calculated using the Casagrade method
(Talbot J. R; Nelson R. E. 1979, pg 7-8).

The procedures outlined were used to generate the phreatic surface of the dam under
consideration
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Using AutoCAD the dimension of the dam was drawn.

Bo= 0.3*m =0.3*15=4.5m ; where m= 15
y0= sqrt. (h^2+d^2) d = sqrt.(15^2+35.6^2) 35.6 = 2.2m
Oo= yo/2=1.1m Point within Toe for the phreatic surface to end.
X and Y values along the Pheratic Line were calculated using the relation
y= 2 yoX + yo2
Values of X are known along the base of the dam the following y were calculated;
X 3.7

7.4

4.6
0

6.1
2

11.
1
7.3
3

14.
8
8.3
6

18.
5
9.2
9

22.2

25.9

29.6

33.3

37

40.7

10.1
3

10.9
0

11.6
2

12.3
0

12.9
5

13.5
6

These values were plotted along the surface, the first and last point need to be Ingree and Egress
transition points in which the AutoCAD Arc command was used. The figure below gives the
completion of the phreatic surface in the dam (represented by the blue line).

Figure showing the pheratic surface within the dam

Mesh Generation
A FORTRAN mesh generator was used to discretise the dam domain into 110 elements. The
mesh generator used was developed by Dr. Derek Gay. The associated files used to generator the
mesh.
M6195_da2.mes Inputs the X Y cooridiantes for each segments (file renamed for this project)
Meshiv.ini contains the file path for the FORTRAN file to read.

Meshiv.for FORTRAN program that reads the meshiv.ini file to read the M6195_da2.mes file
to generate the mesh.

The program RUNs in Programmers file Editor in which the m6195_da2.out output file is
generated in which the coordinates of each generated element are listed anlong with the
connectivity matrix for all the elements. To visualize the elements and theres respectives nodes a
MATLAB script plotfem_xy.m (created by Dr. Gay but altered for this project) is used; the figure
below gives this illustration.

Figure: Mesh generated illustrated using MATLAB

The data from the output file is shown in results section of the project.

(Abdul, Kashyap and Hari 2007)

(Budhu 2010) (Kermani and Barani 2012)

References

Abdul Hussain, I., Kashyap, D., and Hari Prasad, K. (2007). Seepage Modeling Assisted
Optimal Design of a Homogeneous Earth Dam: Procedure Evolution. J. Irrig. Drain
Eng., 133(2), 116130.
Balloffet, Armando, and Michael L. Scheffler. 1982. "NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF THE
TETON DAM FAILURE FLOOD." Journal of Hydraulic Research 20 (4):317-328. doi:
10.1080/00221688209499478.
Budhu, M. 2010. Soil Mechanics and Foundations, 3rd Edition: John Wiley & Sons,
Incorporated.
Kermani, E Fadaei, and GA Barani. 2012. "Seepage Analysis through Earth Dam Based on Finite
Difference Method."
Talbot, J. R., and Nelson, R. E., "The Mechanics of Seepage Analysis, Soil Mechanics Note
No. 7, Oct 1979, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Soil Conservation Service, P. 0. Box 2890,
Washington, DC 20013. 73.