SPH Modelling of a Dike Failure with Detection of the Landslide Sliding Surface and Damage Scenarios for an Electricity Pylon

Abstract

The 3D SPH code SPHERA (RSE SpA) simulates the triggering and runout stages of a full-scale earth-filled dike failure with coastal flood. The code formulation is consistent with the Kinetic Theory of Granular Flow KTGF and requires no tuned input. The main Landslide Sliding Surface LSS within the dike is detected from the field of the quadratic invariant of the strain-rate tensor. The comparison with the experimental LSS position shows Maximum Gross Errors of 0.90m, in terms of depth difference at fixed planimetric point, and of 0.41m, in terms of LSS distance (i.e. 22% and 10% of the initial dike-top height over the excavation bottom). Inter-comparisons consider calibrated FEM results for the triggering stage. The LSS detection criterion is defined and verified via analytical solutions and code validations on spherical Couette flows. The impact on a virtual electricity pylon is assessed. The code improvements and tutorials are available at github.com.

KEYWORDS:

• SPH
• Kagerplassen
• dike failure
• landslides
• floods
• Landslide Sliding Surface
• spherical Couette flows
• SPHERA (RSE SpA)
• LSS detection criterion
• dense granular flows

Acknowledgements

This study has been financed by the Research Fund for the Italian Electrical System (for ‘Ricerca di Sistema -RdS-’), at different stages: under the Contract Agreement between RSE SpA and the Italian Ministry of Economic Development for the of RdS period 2012–2014, in compliance with the Decree of November 9, 2012 (P.I. A. Frigerio); under the Contract Agreement between RSE SpA and the Italian Ministry of Economic Development for the RdS period 2015–2017, in compliance with the Decree of April 21, 2016 (P.I. A. Frigerio); under the Contract Agreement between RSE S.p.A. and the Ministry of Economic Development – General Directorate for the Electricity Market, Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency, Nuclear Energy in compliance with the Decree of April 16, 2018 (P.I. A. Frigerio); Agreement between the Italian Ministry of Economic Development and RSE SpA 2019–2021 in compliance with the Decree of Minister of Economic Development April 16, 2018 (P.I. F. Apadula, formerly A. Frigerio). SPHERA v.9.0.0 (RSE SpA) is realised thanks to the funding ‘Fondo di Ricerca per il Sistema Elettrico’ within the frame of a Program Agreement between RSE SpA and the Italian Ministry of Economic Development (Ministero dello Sviluppo Economico). The FOSS versions of SPHERA have been supported in RSE and promoted by: the Department Director Michel de Nigris; the Deputy Director, Project Manager and Research Team Manager Antonella Frigerio; the Research Team Manager and Project Manager Francesco Apadula (since 2020); the Project Managers Stefano Maran and Giovanni Pirovano (since 2022); the Research Team Managers Guido Pirovano (2016–2020) and Massimo Meghella (2015–2016). The executions of the SPHERA (2021) tutorials associated with the present study require the selection of the specific code sub-version associated with the git ‘commit’ of the chosen tutorial. ‘We acknowledge the CINECA award under the ISCRA initiative, for the availability of High Performance Computing resources and support’: SPHERA simulations have been financed by means of the following instrumental-funding HPC projects: HSPHER22, HSPHER21, HSPHER20, HSPHER9b, HSPHERA9, HPCEFM18, HPCEFM7b, HPCEFM17, HPCEFM16, HPCEFM15, HSPHMI14. The experimental full-scale Kagerplassen dike failure is described by the Theme C (Jommi et al. 2021): ‘Coupled hydromechanical analysis of the pre-failure and the failure behaviour of a dike on soft subsoil’ of the 15th International Benchmark Workshop on Numerical Analysis of Dams, organised by ICOLD, ITCOLD, Politecnico di Milano and RSE SpA. Authors’ contributions: Andrea Amicarelli (whole study but Section 4.3); Emanuela Abbate (SPH 2D configuration of the Kagerplassen dike failure of Section 4.3: contribution carried out as a RSE employee); Antonella Frigerio (paper supervision).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ricerca di Sistema.