A simplified physically-based breach model for a high concrete-faced rockfill dam: A case study

A simplified physically-based model was developed to simulate the breaching process of the Gouhou concrete-faced rockfill dam (CFRD), which is the only breach case of a high CFRD in the world. Considering the dam height, a hydraulic method was chosen to simulate the initial scour position on the downstream slope, with the steepening of the downstream slope taken into account; a headcut erosion formula was adopted to simulate the backward erosion as well. The moment equilibrium method was utilized to calculate the ultimate length of a concrete slab under its self-weight and water loads. The calculated results of the Gouhou CFRD breach case show that the proposed model provides reasonable peak breach flow, final breach width, and failure time, with relative errors less than 15% as compared with the measured data. Sensitivity studies show that the outputs of the proposed model are more or less sensitive to different parameters. Three typical parametric models were compared with the proposed model, and the comparison demonstrates that the proposed physically-based breach model performs better and provides more detailed results than the parametric models.