Abstract
The failure of embankment such as a levee and an earth dam may be caused by overflow, seepage (water leakage), scour or crack. The common cause of failure is piping (seepage path) through embankments. This paper shows a simple method of a numerical simulation for piping failure in order to investigate the process, that is, the piping phenomenon is assumed as the optimal permeability field under a certain condition and the seepage property of the field changes to adjust to neighboring environmental changes using cell automaton. The simple rule that a permeability coefficient changes depending on seepage velocity generated in the seepage field is applied to the cell automaton and the piping phenomenon is simulated in a cross section of the embankment with the finite element saturated seepage analysis.
