Characterization of Flow under Impervious Dams: Dimensionless Groups and Universal Solutions

Abstract

As far as we know, no dimensionless solutions for infiltrated flow under dams in anisotropic media exist since those that can be found in manuals refer to isotropic soils. The novelty of this work is the presentation of universal solutions in the form of abaci for water flow, average exit gradient, uplift force, and its application point for this type of soil. These solutions are obtained by the application of the discriminated nondimensionalization technique to the governing equations in order to find accurate dimensionless groups that control the results of the problem. In particular, the ratio of permeabilities corrected by a geometrical aspect relationship appears as a governing group, so anisotropy can be considered as input information. In this way, the sought solutions are a function of the emerging groups. Numerical solutions are used to successfully verify the results obtained, which in turn are compared to those of other authors for isotropic scenarios.