Breaching of Earthen Dams due to Washout of Fuse Plug

Failure of embankments due to overflowing is the major cause for the embankment dam as compared to other types of failure. Failure of a dam causes major losses huge damage to infrastructure and surrounding area; it has drawn more attention to researchers. It is to analyze the breach mechanism to forecast the infrastructure damage and to develop early warning systems. The geotechnical and flow characteristics influence the rate of breaching. The temporal variations of embankment profile and different functional parameters as initiation of breach, breach depth, total time to embankment failure, are necessary to understand the breaching process. In the present study, a total of eight tests were conducted on earthen dam model by using a fuse plug model. Limited fuse plugs and small-scale tests on a small flume are some limitations of the present work.