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🌊 Levee and Dam Internal Erosion: The Piping Failure Simulator

Explore how seepage water silently erodes a channel through an earthen dam or levee, turning invisible weaknesses into catastrophic failure.

Civil Engineering & Structural Mechanics3DModerate60 FPS💧 Water 🌍 Earth

The simulator demonstrates how hydraulic gradient and seepage velocity interact with soil grain size to determine whether internal erosion initiates, how a piping channel enlarges through a positive feedback loop between flow rate and erosion rate, and how a properly graded filter zone can intercept migrating particles and arrest the process before it reaches breach.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

🎮 How to Use

Adjust the reservoir water level to change the hydraulic head driving seepage, select a soil type to see how grain size and cohesion affect erosion resistance, and toggle the filter/drain zone on or off to compare how quickly an embankment without protection reaches breach versus one with an engineered filter. Watch the seepage exit point for turbidity changes and monitor the internal pipe length as it grows over simulated time.

💡 Did You Know?

Did you know that a properly graded filter can arrest a piping channel within the first few centimeters of contact, sealing it off almost instantly, while the same embankment without a filter can progress from an undetectable seep to full breach in under a day once the erosion pathway fully connects?

⚙ Under the hood

Explore how seepage water silently erodes a channel through an earthen dam or levee, turning invisible weaknesses into catastrophic failure.

geotechnical engineeringdam safetyinternal erosionpiping failureseepagelevee failurecivil engineeringhydraulics

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install