Measurement of pressure in the visible hole erosion test

-Abstract: The hole erosion test (HET) is commonly used to study the occurrence of internal soil erosion when water concentrated leaks occur. This erosion is known as “piping” in soil mechanics. Piping erosion is invisible and occurs randomly within the soil body. Therefore, in order to gain a better understanding of how piping erosion develops, it would be helpful to utilize a visible HET design in which the dynamics of the piping hole can be observed directly. In this technical note, a new HET apparatus is presented to observe the development of piping erosion and to monitor the dynamic pressure condition during the whole erosion process. A preliminary model test was carried out based on the new visible HET apparatus and “pressure heads” monitoring technique,. The results successfully verified the performance of the proposed apparatus and experimental methods during the process of hole erosion, indicating that the hole shape changes during continuous erosion and is not fully symmetrical because of the initial profile of the hole. The internal hole becomes increasingly curved when subjected to continous piping flow. The test results agree with the numerical simulation by Riha and Jandora (2015) who considered the effect of the hole entrance shape.

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