Effect of Depth of Desiccation Cracks on Earth Embankments

The aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of the depth of the desiccation cracks on the hydraulic behavior of an earth embankment under flooding conditions. A numerical model was developed using a finite element package CODE_BRIGHT. As the phenomenon of desiccation cracking is highly random, a simple random model was developed to capture the variability in crack depth. The random crack depth geometry was then passed on to the finite element mesh, so that a probabilistic analysis can be carried out using a Monte Carlo approach, for assessing the embankment's integrity. The results obtained from the analysis such as time to steady state saturation and steady state flow rate at the outward slope were very interesting and provided an insight on the effect of desiccation cracks on unsaturated earth embankments.