The Telltale Sand Boil; Or how Earthquakes Led to a Discovery of the Cause
of Floods
The geographic situation of levees makes them vulnerable to earthquake
failure by foundation liquefaction. Interestingly, the geology of many
critical levee sites favors the development of pore pressure dissipation
processes during floods that are very similar to those that occur in earthquakes.
In both cases, bearing capacity failure is the decisive failure process.
The case is made here that the traditional hypothesis of levee failure
by piping of fines leading to collapse of the levee into piped-out cavities
is incorrect for many failures. Accurate eyewitness observaation is the
key to correct diagnosis of levee failure.
flood geo vtech:2:an106k.gif:370
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coverage of the 1997 Arboga failure.