Numerical Modelling of Dam Breaching

Abstract

Until recently, research has been scarce in the field of physical modelling of dam breaching. Over the past few years, teams from the University of Ottawa, Canada, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands, and HR Wallingford, United Kingdom have worked on several physical models to help determine how various dam breaching characteristics vary due to changes in dam geometry and geotechnical properties. The purpose of this project is to use these new experimental data sets to compare and validate the applicability range of two existing pieces of software, MIKE11-DB and BREACH developed by the Danish Hydraulic Institute and National Weather Service, respectively. Several breaching characteristics such as the outflow hydrograph, peak flow, lag time, breaching time, breach width, and water level are considered in the present study. A sensitivity analysis is also performed on the model’s main input parameters and their sensitivity and performance is ranked accordingly.