Experimental and numerical modeling to investigate the riverbank’s stability

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to assess the failure mechanism of riverbanks due to stream flow experimentally and numerically to avoid recurring landslides by identifying the most dangerous place and treating them by a suitable method. The experiments and the physical models were carried out to study the failure mechanism of riverbank and evaluation of their stability in two cases: short-term condition and long-term condition flow where three models were tested. The Tigris River (Iraq) is considered as a model in this paper in terms of the applied velocity and modeled soil of the banks it was used at the same characteristics in the prototype scale. Also, a numerical simulation was performed using the FLOW-3D program to determine the velocity distribution and to identify the areas subjected to the high stress levels through the water flow. The obtained results in this paper are inspecting of failure mechanism types that occur under the influence of specific limits of flow velocity, which have shown good compatibility with the type of failure in the prototype scale. In addition to calculating the amount of soil erosion, the failure angle, and the amount of soil settlement at the riverbank model is investigated also. The results of experimental work and numerical simulation were well matched, where the standard error rate for Froude number ranged between (1.8%–6.6%), and the flow depth between (2.7%–6.9%).