Ga. Fenton et Dv. Griffiths, STATISTICS OF FREE-SURFACE FLOW-THROUGH STOCHASTIC EARTH DAM, Journal of geotechnical engineering, 122(6), 1996, pp. 427-436
Even though soil is a highly variable material, the analysis of flow t
hrough earth dams typically proceeds deterministically and results can
sometimes be quite misleading. In fact it is well known that soil per
meability varies randomly from point to point in space and an improved
earth dam model should incorporate this variability. In this paper th
e soil permeability in an earth dam of variable geometry is viewed as
a weakly stationary spatially random field following a lognormal distr
ibution with prescribed mean, variance, and spatial correlation struct
ure. The mean and variance of the total flow rate through the dam and
free surface drawdown are estimated using Monte Carlo simulations. A s
implified empirical approach to the prediction of the mean and varianc
e of the flow rate is presented to allow these quantities to be approx
imated easily and without resorting to simulation.