Seepage Towards Highway Cuts

The natural ground, through which highway cuts are made, contributes to the waters to be drained in these cuts. The problem of seepage in such cases is studied on the basis of the analysis of the hydrodynamic forces within the flow medium. The problem is somewhat similar to trapezoidal sections of finite lengths of earth dams where some rigorous solutions for the free surfaces only were developed, such as those by Falkovich, Mikhailov, Meletchenko, Pavlovsky and Polubarinova-Kochina. The proposed method checks favorably with these solutions and gives not only the free surface but also a complete solution. In highway cuts, the extent of the flow region is not limited as in the case of earth dams. A procedure is explained by which the developed formulas can be extended for application to highway cuts. The free surface, the discharge face, the rate of flow towards the highway cuts and the hydropotential distribution within the natural ground along these cuts, can be determined directly by the proposed method. An illustrative example is also presented.