Quantifying Erodibility of Embankment Materials

for the Modeling of Dam Breach Processes

To HET or to JET — On Which to Bet?

Tony L. Wahl – USBR

Gregory J. Hanson – USDA-ARS
Pierre-Louis Regazzoni – Ph.D. student, Université de Nantes
Background
• CEATI Dam Breach Erosion project is
working to improve embankment dam breach
models
– Physically-based breach models now under
development use quantitative inputs of material
erodibility
– Cohesive materials are the key to modeling the
erosion and breach of most embankments
– We are evaluating alternative methods for
obtaining required input data
Erodibility Testing – Why?
• Erodibility of cohesive soils is highly variable
and depends on many factors:
– Density, compaction moisture content, in situ
moisture, soil and water chemistry, etc.
• Predictions of erodibility as function of other
soil properties carry high uncertainty
• Measurements of erodibility are best
Erodibility Testing Alternatives
• Alternative methods for measuring erodibility
of cohesive embankment materials
– Hole Erosion Test (HET) (piping erosion)
– ARS submerged Jet Erosion Test (JET) (scour)
– Flume-type tests (e.g., Erosion Function
Apparatus, SEDFLUME)
– Rotating cylinder test
– Many others
• Methods for measuring erodibility should be
practical, robust, and applicable to dam
breach flow situations
   k d (   c )
m  C e (   c )
Rate of erosion (mass/area/time, or volume/area/time)

C e or k d

c Shear stress
Hole Erosion Test – Simulates Piping

~15mm

HET test apparatus Test specimen after HET

Hole Erosion Test - History
• Constant-flow test was developed in 1980s
by Lefebvre et al.
• Constant-head version (HET) by Wan and Fell
(2004), with a companion Slot Erosion Test
(SET) that used a much larger soil sample
• HET has best potential for practical
application
Our HET facilities

Head tank

V-notch weir

Test specimen
Hole erosion test procedure
• Flow at constant head through 6-mm (¼”) hole
• Head is increased incrementally until erosion occurs
– Wan and Fell (2004) used 50-1200 mm heads
– Our facilities allow up to 5400 mm head
• When critical shear stress is exceeded, erosion
starts and flow increases exponentially
– Applied stress increases as hole enlarges
– “Progressive” erosion
• Initial and final hole diameters are known/measured
• Flow rate and head are recorded continuously and
used to compute hole diameters during test (by
applying momentum equation to flow through hole)
Using the Results – The IHET index
• Wan and Fell (2004) proposed I HET   log 10 Ce

• Note that index does not depend on c

• Primary initial purpose was to identify soils / dams
that could pipe rapidly
 Jet Erosion Test (JET)

Head
Water Surface do

Potential
Core Jp
Diffused Ji
Je
Jet
Original Bed
Scoured
Bed Jet Centerline
2
 Jp 
 i   o   for Ji > Jp

Stress  Ji 

Where:  o Cf Uo
Distribution 2
Laboratory JET
Apparatus Jet
Tube

Point Lid
Gage

Deflection
Plate

Sample

Submergence
Tank
JET background
• Developed at USDA-ARS, Stillwater, Okla.
• Applied to:
– Headcut erosion in earthen spillway channels
– Headcut erosion during embankment overtopping
and breach
JET procedure
• Establish a fixed test head and initial jet
distance to obtain desired stress
• Measure scour beneath jet over time (~2 hrs)
– Measurements made manually by point gage at
increasing time intervals
• Applied stress and erosion rate decrease as
scour occurs
 JET Analysis
• Predict equilibrium scour
depth by fitting measured
scour data to hyperbolic
function
– Stress that would be applied
at that depth is c
• Fit dimensionless time
and scour data to
theoretical model by
Blaisdell to determine kd
• Fitting is accomplished
using Excel Solver utility
Research objective
• Compare JET and HET
– Both tests determine a critical shear stress and
erosion rate coefficient
– Are they the same?
– If not, do they correlate?
– Which has most potential to meet our needs?

• Secondary objective: Improve HET test

procedures and data analysis
HET – Basic Improvements
• New VB data collection software to provide
real-time graphical display of test data
• Adopted procedures to avoid transitioning
from laminar to turbulent flow during a test
• New spreadsheets to facilitate analysis
• High-head facility to allow testing of more
erosion-resistant soils
HET – Friction Factor
• Wan and Fell assumed friction factor varied
linearly with test time
1/ 5
 Qt Lt 64 
2
d   fTt 
2 
  w g ht  
• This caused calculations to compute
increase in hole diameter even when we
knew there was no significant erosion
– Artifact of presumed change in friction factor
HET – Friction Factor Tests
• Prepared multiple test specimens of a Sandy
Lean Clay s(CL) soil
• Ran tests for varying lengths of time
– End of each test represented one intermediate
state of a full-length test
 Results
90 90 90

80 80 80
Turbulent Friction Factor (Pa/(m/s) 2)

Turbulent Friction Factor (Pa/(m/s) 2)

Turbulent Friction Factor (Pa/(m/s) 2)
70 70 70

60 60 60
R2 = 0.6157
50 50 50
R2 = 0.8355
R2 = 0.5949
40 40 40

30 30 30
Final f
20 20 20 Initial f

Trend line data

10 10 10
Trend line
0 0 0
-5 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 0 10 20 30
Total Test Tim e (m inutes) Progressive Erosion Tim e (m inutes) Hole Diam eter (m m )

• Friction factor is proportional to hole diameter, (Q2/S)1/5

• This finding confirmed by Lim (2006)
HET – Alternative analysis method

• Piping erosion model developed by Bonelli et

al. (2006) at CEMAGREF showed that
dimensionless hole radius is an exponential
function of dimensionless time, when the
hole is progressively eroding
  c  t / ter 2 L d
R(t )

 1  1   e  1  t er 
2L

R0  0  k d  w h Ce  w h
5/ 2
   c  t / ter 
5/ 2
Q(t )  R(t ) 
Q 
*
    
 1  1   e  1 
Q0  R0     0  
HET – Bonelli Analysis
• Use Excel Solver to determine value of c
and ter that produces best fit…leads to value
for kd

• This avoids the need to determine the final

hole diameter
• Requires that progressive erosion begin
immediately, or we must estimate the hole
diameter and shear stress at the time at
which progressive erosion begins
Summary of HET Improvements
• Better flow measurement and data collection
• Improved real-time data collection software
– Operator gets better feedback about test progress
• Better modeling of friction factor
• Alternative to use Bonelli analysis procedure
that does not require measurement of final
hole diameter
HET / JET comparison
• Parallel tests on 7 different soils (some in
multiple moisture/compaction conditions)
CL-ML (Silty Clay)
s(CL), CL(s), CL (Lean Clays)
CH-CL, CH (Fat Clay)

• Paired specimens
– One tested in JET
– One tested in HET
 6

HET
JET

IHET
4
IJET

2
TE 55T-160 MF P2 ARS P295/owc P395/owc TF P3ARS MP
CL-ML s(CL) CL s(CL) s(CL) (CL)s CH (CL)s CH/CL
 1000
HET
JET

100

10
 c,HET
 c,JET
(Pa) 1

0.1

0.01
TE 55T-160 MF P2 ARS P295/owc P395/owc TF P3ARS MP
CL-ML s(CL) CL s(CL) s(CL) (CL)s CH (CL)s CH/CL
 6 1000

100
5

10

 c HET (Pa)
I HET

3 Tested Soils
0.1
Line of agreement
Tested Soils
Lim (2006) HET vs. RCT Line of agreement

2 0.01
2 3 4 5 6 0.01 0.1 1 10 100 1000
I JET, I RCT  c JET (Pa)
 10

P2 HET
P2 JET
JET
1 P3 HET
P2 P3 JET

kd , cm 3/(N-s)
HET
0.1
JET

P3
HET
0.01

0.001

10000

1000
HET

P3
100
c, Pa

HET
JET
10

P2
1 P2 HET
P2 JET
JET
0.1 P3 HET
P3 JET

0.01

2.0
P2
P3
3
Dry density, g/cm

1.9

1.8

1.7
6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20

Moisture Content, %
JET vs HET Comparison
• HET produces much lower erosion rates and
higher critical stress values
• Relative erodibility ranking of soils compares
reasonably well
• Correlation between tests is adequate
considering variable nature of erodibility

• What about robustness?

 1000

100

10
Detachment Rate Coefficient

Very erodible
kd (cm /N-s)

1
Erodible
3

0.1
Moderately resistant

0.01
Resistant

Very resistant
Hanson and Simon (2001)
0.001 HETs
JETs
Erodibility classifications based on JET results

0.0001
0.00001 0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1 10 100 1000 10000

Critical Shear Stress, c (Pa)

Range of Applicability
• JET – Spans 5.5 orders of magnitude
• HET – Spans only 2.8 orders of magnitude
– The most erosion-resistant soils could not be
eroded, even at 5+ meters of head
• No successful tests with IHET > 5.3
• Wan and Fell (2004) assigned class 6 to anything that did
not erode at 1200 mm
• IHET class 6 “soils” may not exist
– Weak soils collapse or scour/slake at entrance
and exit of hole…confounds analysis
• No successful tests yielding IHET < 2.5
 HET Application Limits

{
Final Observations
• The HET and JET produce much different
quantitative results
– Probably due to simplifications of the stress
descriptions used in each analysis and inherent
differences in erosion mechanisms
• It seems plausible to develop useful
correlations between the two tests
Final Observations (continued)
• HET is much more difficult to perform
successfully than the JET, especially with
very weak soils (30-50% success)
• Judgment is often required to complete HET
analysis
– Proposed subjectivity index for rating test quality
Final Observations (continued)
• High-head HET facility has shown us that
even soils with very high critical stresses are
not in IHET class 6

IHET class 6 “soils” may not exist

• JET is more adaptable to broad range of

soils and also can be used for in situ testing
Final Observations (continued)
• For future development of erosion models,
JET has many advantages
• For applications in which HET is already
being used, this research offers a means for
relating JET to HET
Questions?
Why the Difference?
• Simplified modeling of shear stresses in each test
environment
– Entrance and exit turbulence and lack of fully developed
flow in HET
– JET uses shear stress theory developed for impingement
against flat plate
• Different erosion mechanisms
– JET has more opportunity to jack soil blocks out of the
exposed planar surface
– In HET, soil blocks lining the small-diameter hole are
protected from jacking by interlocking with the surrounding
soil mass
– Different sensitivity to variations in soil fabric or structure
Effect of soil fabric
Why the Difference (continued)?

• Different relative importance of

different kinds of stress
• Briaud proposes that erosion may
depend fundamentally on three
different kinds of stress
– Shear stress
– Turbulent fluctuations of shear stress
– Turbulent fluctuations of normal stress
Why the Difference (continued)?
• Correlating erosion with only the shear
stress may be ok if the other two types
of stress are also correlated with shear
• This correlation may exist for varying
test heads in one testing environment,
but in different environments, relative
contributions of each type of stress
may be different
Principal Types of Erosive Stress?

HET
Shear Shear Stress Normal Stress
Turbulence
Turbulence

JET Shear Shear Stress

Turbulence
Normal Stress
Turbulence