Fragility Assessment of Levee Relief Wells during River Flooding

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

1-1-2023

Abstract

Levees can be subjected to excessive underseepage through their alluvial foundations during high water periods, which is abated by the installation of relief wells. The USACE uses a modified version of the blanket theory to design relief wells. However, there are significant uncertainties in the performance of relief wells when compared to field observations. Therefore, this study presents a reliability analysis to examine the probability of failure for relief well systems and examine the controlling parameters. This was accomplished using a generic 3D MODFLOW-USG model and a random forest regression model. The results from MODFLOW simulations were used for sensitivity analysis and for training a random forest model, which was used to perform Monte Carlo simulations to develop fragility curves. The sensitivity analysis results showed that the entry and exit distance and the aquifer's hydraulic conductivity exhibit the greatest impact on total head. Fragility curves based on uniform random values of the design parameters showed that the probability of failure does not vary significantly as the well spacing increased. These findings show that there is a potential to decrease the economic cost since the well spacing does not affect the performance of relief wells significantly.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

Geotechnical Special Publication

First Page

204

Last Page

212

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