Progressive Dam-Failure Assessment by Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) Method

Abstract

The dam-break water flow is a complex fluid motion, showing strong nonlinearity and stochasticity. In order to better study the characteristics of the dam burst flood, the smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method was chosen to establish a two-dimensional classical dam-burst model, and the flow velocity distribution graph was obtained by calculation and compared with the experimental results in the literature, and the fitting degree of the two was obtained to be 88.4%, which verifies the validity of the model. On this basis, according to the principle of dam failure, the two failure modes of equal-interval gradual failure and progressive gradual failure were simulated, and the water body characteristics such as water flow velocity, energy, pressure, etc., were analyzed based on the different working conditions of the two modes to obtain the characteristics of gradual dam-failure water flow under the two kinds of numerical models. The simulation results show that, compared with the instantaneous dam failure mode, (1) the flow rate of the dam-failure stream reaching the downstream slows down in the gradual dam-failure mode; (2) the depth development of the breach extends downward in layers and stages over time, and the overall duration of the breach is prolonged; (3) the destructive power of the dam-failure flood is weakened as the number of segments increases. The results of the study show that, compared with the instant dam-failure mode, the calculation results of the breach development considering the progressive gradual dam-failure mode are more in line with the theoretical solution and closer to the actual process of dam failure, which can provide ideas and references for advancing the numerical study of dam failure.