Many quantified risk assessments finish the failure mode event tree at the estimated occurrence of an embankment breach leading to dam failure outflows and downstream consequences. In some situations, for dams with multiple embankments with potentially different consequences downstream of each embankment, the possibility for further breaches may be pertinent if there may potentially be higher consequences for a multiple breach scenario. The location of an initial breach and sequence of subsequent breaches could also result in different contributions to total risk.
This paper discusses a method applied to investigate the conditional probability of flood overtopping breaches for multiple earth-fill embankments with grass covered downstream slopes.
For the subject dam, preliminary modelling identified that for a flood overtopping breach of an embankment the breach’s development may not be sufficient to reduce the lake level and sustained overtopping flow over the remaining embankment crests could lead to further embankment breaches.
A Monte Carlo dam breach simulation modelling approach was used with a large number of flood events. The simulation modelling considered erosion initiation for a grass slope due to the combination of velocity and duration of flow, and erosion continuing to breach based on duration of flow after erosion initiation. Potential uncertainty of erosion initiation and erosion continuing to breach were represented with probability distributions in the Monte Carlo modelling.
The results from the large number of dam breach simulations were then analysed with post processing to derive conditional probabilities for single or multiple breaches and breach sequence.
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