EGU2020-7465
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-7465
EGU General Assembly 2020
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Backward piping erosion detection in levees by fiber optic acoustic sensing

Juan Pablo Aguilar-López1,2, Andres Garcia-Ruiz3, Thom Bogaard1, and Miguel Gonzalez-Herraez3
Juan Pablo Aguilar-López et al.
  • 1Water resources section (Hydrology), Faculty of civil engineering, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands (j.p.aguilarlopez@tudelft.nl)
  • 2Hydraulic engineering (Hydraulic structures and flood risk), Faculty of civil engineering, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands (j.p.aguilarlopez@tudelft.nl)
  • 3Department of electronics, Polytechnic School, Universidad de Alcalà ,(andres.garciaruiz@uah.es)

Backward piping erosion (BEP) is considered the most dangerous failure mode for levees due to its unpredictable nature. This erosive process happens most of the time underneath the impermeable layers on which levees are commonly founded. This makes it very difficult to detect as conventional geophysical methods are either too expensive or too imprecise for real time monitoring of longitudinal soil made structures such as Dams or levees. Fiber optic based distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) is an innovative technology which allows to retrieve information from an acoustic propagating medium in a spatially dense manner by using a fiber optic cable. The present study aimed to explore the potential of DAS for early detection of BEP  under levees based on the frictional emissions of the sand grains during the erosive process. The tests were performed in the lab under controlled ambient noise conditions. The technology was tested by embedding fiber optic based microphones underneath and outside a laboratory scaled aquifer set up capable of recreating BEP. The results show that indeed the process emits certain characteristic frequencies which may be located between 1200 to 1600 Hz and and that they can easily be captured by the fiber optic cables.

How to cite: Aguilar-López, J. P., Garcia-Ruiz, A., Bogaard, T., and Gonzalez-Herraez, M.: Backward piping erosion detection in levees by fiber optic acoustic sensing, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-7465, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-7465, 2020

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