Can SPH models simulate breach evolution of landslide dams or earth-rockfill dams?

Applications
1

Hello everyone,

I am interested in the capability of existing SPH-based models (open-source or commercial) to simulate the breach evolution process of both landslide dams (natural dams) and earth-rockfill dams (engineered dams).:handshake:

More specifically, I would like to know:

  • Can these models reproduce overtopping flow, erosion processes, and the progressive breach development until a stable cross-section is formed?

  • Are there any references, case studies, or example simulations available that demonstrate such applications?

Any guidance, recommended codes, or related literature would be highly appreciated.

Thank you!

2

Hello @Tang_SuKai, welcome to the community.

there is definitely a lot of ongoing work about this kind of processes in SPH, either using a multi-phase non-Newtonian rheology approach in pure SPH, or using a coupled SPH/DEM (Discrete Element Model) approach. For the pure SPH approach, see for example

  • Ghaïtanellis et al. (2018), “A SPH elastic-viscoplastic model for granular flows and bed-load transport”, Redirecting
  • Feng et al. (2022), “Two-phase fully-coupled smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) model for unsaturated soils and its application to rainfall-induced slope collapse”, Redirecting

The granular rheology present in GPUSPH was specifically introduced thanks to the work of @alex.ghaitanellis that led to the 2018 paper mentioned above.