Seepage through earth dam with clay core and toe drain: the Casagrande–Numerov analytical legacy revisited

ABSTRACT

Seepage through a zoned earth-filled dam with a vertical clay core, two permeable shoulders and toe drain are studied. Seepage through the core and the downstream shoulder are coupled. The flow rate and phreatic surface are found. The hodograph method is used, viz. a conformal mapping of a rectangle in the complex potential plane onto a circular triangle. Numerically, MODFLOW 2005 simulated seepage with the refraction of the streamlines at the interfaces between the core and both shoulders.

KEYWORDS:

• Complex potential-hodograph method
• phreatic surface–refraction
• MODFLOW numerical simulations

Acknowledgments

The research was funded by the subsidy allocated to Kazan Federal University for the state assignment in the sphere of scientific activities, project №  1.13556.2019/13.1. and by Sultan Qaboos University, Oman, grant IG/AGR/485 SWAE/14/02. Helpful comments by two anonymous referees are appreciated.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The research was funded by the subsidy allocated to Kazan Federal University for the state assignment in the sphere of scientific activities, project №  1.13556.2019/13.1. and by Sultan Qaboos University, Oman, grant IG/AGR/485 SWAE/14/02.