SVFlux - 2D Gallery - Earth Dam Problems

Dam Drawdown
The rapid drawdown of reservoir levels behind earth dams is a common cause of instability. SVFlux can be used to estimate the buildup of pore-water pressures in earth dams due to rapid drain-down. The resulting pore-water pressures may then be transferred to the slope stability package in order to calculate a factor of safety. It should be noted that automatic mesh refinement is important for solving these types of problems as significant refinement is often needed along the upstream face in order to accurately calculate gradients.

Complex Dam

This example shows the ability of SVFlux to solve extremely complicated problems with small regions. Large differences in hydraulic conductivity (up to 4 orders of magnitude) were placed adjacent to each other to illustrate the ability of SVFlux to solve problems typically impossible with other software packages.

Model filename: EarthDams > ComplexDam.svm


Earth Fill Dam

Water movement through an earth dam.
Model setup time: 12 minutes
Solution time: 1 second on PIII-1.0 GHz
Nodes: 387


Earth Dam

This application demonstrates the modeling of a cutoff below an earth dam and any resulting flow beneath the cutoff.
Model setup time: 46 minutes
Solution time: 16 seconds on PIII-1.0 GHz
Nodes: 1148


Earth Dam Low

Water movement shown by flow vectors through an earth dam.
Model setup time: 12 minutes
Solution time: 3 seconds on PIII-1.0 GHz
Nodes: 882


Earth Dam Toe

Detailed calculation of flow vectors through an earth dam.
Model setup time: 7 minutes
Solution time: 1 second on PIII-1.0 GHz
Nodes: 292


Mica Earth Dam

This model illustrates the use of a 2D cross-section to model the flow through a setup similar to the Mica earth dam.


Multi-Core Earth Dam

The flow through multiple core earth dams is illustrated in this numerical model.