Protective Safety against Soil Erosion and Structural Safety against Slide Failure of Overtopping Protection Using Gabion Mattresses for Irrigation Pond Embankment

Abstract

Larger floods are causing overtopping failures of irrigation pond embankments due to insufficient storage or release capacity for the existing reservoirs. Among the traditional modifications and innovative designs for resolving this problem, an overtopping protection system is promising to be most applicable because it can effectively regulate or decrease the amount of soil erosion due to overtopping flow, and keep the soil embankment away any troublesome damage or breakage during the overtopping. Gabion mattresses, an assembly of mattress-shaped wire mesh frames packed with rock particles and placed on the embankment crest and downstream slope, are proposed for the overtopping protection of the irrigation pond embankment. Both their protective safety against soil erosion due to overtopping flow and their structural safety against slide failure along embankment surface are verified based on the hydraulic analysis of the overtopping flow and the stress deformation analysis of the gabion mattresses. The design procedures of the gabion anchors and the energy dissipator required to keep the gabion mattresses structurally safe are successfully provided.