Stochastic research of earth dam breaching due to overtopping

The earth dam breach due to overtopping is one of the most complicated engineering problems. It generates a flood wave that propagates downstream the valley below the dam. The flood wave has usually disastrous consequences and causes damage both to human lives and financial losses, strongly exceeding the cost of the dam breached. In order to create emergency and alarm systems and flood protection and management plans, the knowledge of the critical flood hydrograph is necessary. The proposal of the probable worst possible but realistic flood hydrograph is then of vital importance when solving flood wave propagation downstream the valley bellow the dam. The solution of this highly complicated problem may be in simultaneous application of deterministic and stochastic modelling. The paper presents the Monte-Carlo simulation using hypercube sampling to produce the probabilistic features of dam breach flooding due to uncertainties in inflows and breach formation.