Solution of seepage field in different soil layers of concrete dam foundation by flow net method

Abstract

Because of the seepage problem of concrete dam foundation, the water head, pore water pressure, hydraulic gradient and seepage velocity of each point in the seepage field are obtained by drawing flow net, and finally the seepage flow is obtained to predict the seepage of dam foundation. In this paper, the flow net diagram is used to solve the pore water pressure at the fixed point of the dam foundation soil layer under three different conditions: homogeneous isotropy, homogeneous anisotropy and layered soil. The calculation accuracy of the flow net method is verified through the calculation with the finite difference software FLAC3D numerical analysis. The results indicated that the pore water pressure of the three kinds of dam foundation soil layers calculated by the flow net method is more similar from that calculated by the numerical method, which indicates that the flow net method has high accuracy and can be used in some engineering practice with difficult modeling.