Large-Scale Testing of Distributed Temperature Sensing for Early Detection of Piping
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 145, Issue 9
Abstract
Internal erosion is the cause of significant damage in dams and river embankments in many countries. In the last 20 years, the use of fiber-optic distributed temperature sensing (DTS) has proved to be an effective tool for the detection and quantification of leakages and internal erosion in dams. This work investigates the effectiveness of DTS for levee monitoring and focuses on the early detection of backward erosion piping. The latter is a failure mechanism that affects the foundation layer of structures resting on sandy soils. The paper presents data from a piping test performed on a large-scale experimental levee equipped with a DTS system together with a large number of accompanying sensors. With the help of numerical modeling, the effect of seepage and backward erosion piping on the pore pressure and temperature field is analyzed, eventually bringing the identification of the processes that promote the onset of thermal anomalies.
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Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo that founded the project Riversafe, on the use of fiber optic sensors for levee monitoring. The analysis of the field data was performed within the project. We also acknowledge TenCate Geosynthetics, eDF, and geophyConsult for performing fiber-optic measurements and providing their know-how about this technique.
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Published In
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 145 • Issue 9 • September 2019
Copyright
©2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Oct 23, 2016
Accepted: Dec 21, 2018
Published online: Jul 9, 2019
Published in print: Sep 1, 2019
Discussion open until: Dec 9, 2019
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