The Hydraulic and Boundary Characteristics of a Dike Breach Based on Cluster Analysis

It is important to determine the hydraulic boundary eigenvalues of typical embankment breaches before carrying out research on their occurrence mechanisms and assessing their repair technology. However, it is difficult to obtain the hydraulic boundary conditions of the typical levee breaches accurately with minor or incomplete measured data due to the complexity and instability of the levee breach. Based on more than 100 groups of domestic and foreign test data of embankment/earth dam failures, the correlation between the hydraulic boundary eigenvalues of a breach was established based on the cluster analysis approach. Additionally, the missing values were imputed after correlating and fitting. Meanwhile, the hydraulic boundary parameters and the related equations of a generalized typical breach were obtained through the statistical analysis of the probability density of the dimensionless eigenvalues of the breach. The analysis showed that the width of the breach mainly ranges in 20 similar to 100 m, while the water head of the breach is 4 similar to 12 m, and the velocity of the breach is 2 similar to 8 m/s. The distribution probabilities of all them are about 64 similar to 71%. The probability density of the width-to-depth ratio and the Froude number of the breach are both subject to normal distribution characteristics. The distribution frequency of the width-to-depth ratio of 3 similar to 8 is approximately 55%, and the Froude number of 0.4 similar to 0.8 is approximately 60%. These methods and findings might provide valuable support for the statistical research of the boundary and hydraulic characteristics of the breach, and the closure technology of breach.