Assessing the Equivalent Hydraulic Conductivity of Rockfill Dam in Vertical and Horizontal Arrangements

Rockfill dams are considered as detention structures, used to control floods. Due to rocks’ size and large pores in between, Darcy’s law is invalid in these dams. Many studies have been conducted to investigate the non-linear flow in homogenous coarse porous media. Wilkins (1955), Ahmed and Sonada (1969), and Stephenson (1979) tried to introduce appropriate coefficients of the non-linear flow equation. Other studies have been also conducted to investigate the flow in heterogeneous rockfill structures, such as Hosseini and Joy (2007), introducing a one-dimensional model for non-linear flow in homogenous and heterogeneous coarse porous media. Realizing the importance of layered rockfill dams and the few conducted studies in this field, flow through layered rockfill dam, and horizontal and vertical arrangement of layers have been modeled in the current study.  In this regard, a two-dimensional numerical model solving the governing equations by finite volume method has been developed.