Three Dimensional Modeling of Water Erosion in the Fluid / Soil Interface

Soil erosion is a complex phenomenon which yields at its final stage insidious fluid leakages under the hydraulic infrastructures known as piping and which provokes their rupture. In this work, the water erosion is modeled in the fluid/soil interface during the hole erosion test (HET). The Hole Erosion Test is commonly used to quantify the rate of piping erosion. The aim of this work is to predict the erosion of soil in the fluid/soil interface by using the fluid package and three dimensional modeling. This modeling makes it possible describing the effect of the flow on erosion in the interface fluid/soil by using the turbulence model equations, and predicts a non uniform erosion along the hole length unlike the usual one dimensional models. In particular, the flow velocity is found to increase noticeably the erosion rate. Effects on the wall-shear stress resulting from varying flow velocity and applied hydraulic gradient are analyzed. Various parametric studies were performed and had shown that the three-dimensional modeling introduced in the present study showed that the erosion rate is not uniform along the pipe wall as observed experimentally after performing the standard hole erosion test.