Probabilistic risk analysis of dyke failure modes using FTA

Abstract

The mechanism of dyke instability was studied in this paper. First, based on a simplified fault tree (FT) for dyke failure, its instability was modelled. Second, dyke failure mode could be derived by solving FT, and then the limit state equations were formulated. Further, after analysing the distribution pattern of random variables and the parameters of each limit state equation, the probability of dyke failure in each failure mode was calculated using the Monte-Carlo simulation, and finally the total probability of dyke instability was obtained. In case studies, for the selected river, results showed that the probabilities of piping (No.2) and dyke landslide (No.3) were 0.9904 × 10⁻² yr⁻¹ and 1.3904 × 10⁻² yr⁻¹ respectively. The results have certain guiding significance on dyke design and safety evaluation.

Keywords:

• Reliability
• dyke failure
• modelling and simulation
• fault tree
• infrastructure management

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.