Transient Seepage Analysis Through Earth Dam by Finite Element Method

This paper describes the application of finite element method to transient seepage through an earth dam, the stress analysis of an earth dam under a rapid drawdown condition, and the SOR method that we adopted to solve simultaneous equation. We found that apertinent over-relaxation-factor was from 1.4 to 1.6 and an Euclid norm and an arithmetical average are suitable for the convergence judgment. Next, we show a method of transient seepage analysis and a typical example is analyzed here. Furthermore, by a seepage stress analysis at a rapid drawdown, we show that a upstream slope at a rapid drawdown becomes unstability to a considerable degree than that at a steady state seepage.