Toprak dolgu barajlarda piyezometrelerin optimum yerleştirilmesi üzerine bir çalışma

Excessive pore water pressure is one of the causes of failure in earth-fill dams. Therefore, distribution of pore water pressure within the dam body must be observed throughout the lifetime of the structure. The observation can be performed by means of an instrumentation system installed within the embankment. The system consists of sensors placed at specific loations. There are no standard guidelines to assign required number of the sensors and their proper locations within the body. Currently, instrumentation systems are always designed by only experiences, arbitrary desires or overrated approaches to be on the safe side. These procedures may cause unnecessarily high costs and questionable information about the structural behaviour. In this study, behaviour of the pore water pressure distribution under steady state, rapid fill, and rapid drawdown conditions is examined by analyzing various earth-fill dam cross-sections with different parameters. According to the results, best locations and number of the piezometers are determined to establish an ideal piezometer layout within the dam body. This layout is proposed to be the most economical and realistic design of monitoring system which provides appropriate information about number and locations of the sensors.