Presented in French
On May 19th, 2020, Edenville Dam (Michigan) failed after the area was subjected to intense rainfall. An independent forensic team (IFT) released a preliminary report in which three probable causes of failure are identified. The IFT considers static liquefaction of the embankment to be the most probable cause of failure. The objective of this study is to perform a simple investigation of static liquefaction as a potential mode of failure for Edenville dam. The SIGMA/W software (GeoStudio) is used to simulate the rise of reservoir level during the rainfall and its impact on the overall stability of the dam. The NorSand constitutive model is used to model the dam body. While many hypotheses are made to conduct this simplified study, the simulation results nevertheless show that static liquefaction of the dam is indeed possible as a direct consequence of the rapid increase in reservoir level.
Vincent CastonguayVincent did his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in civil engineering at Université Laval (Québec City, Canada). His doctoral research led him to explore the inner workings of the NorSand constitutive law, in order to improve its behaviour prediction capabilities for sands subjected to cyclic loading. He joined the GeoStudio research and development team at Seequent in 2020, where he primarily works on the development of the SIGMA/W module. Vincent served as the Young Professional Representative on the Canadian Geotechnical Society's national executive committee for 2020-2021. He recently accepted to serve as the CGS Eastern-Québec section Director. The time he has left in a week is ideally spent hiking, sleeping in a tent, or destroying his hands on a climbing wall.
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Le Rendez-Vous du Comité Francophone de l'ACB is a periodic event (virtual and/or face-to-face) during which members of the committee receive a variety of presenters and guests to address and discuss various topics related to dams.
More informal and interactive than traditional webinars, this activity sometimes takes the form of a presentation, sometimes a discussion, and sometimes both.
