Civil engineers frequently need to deal with seepage through soils involving flow through and beneath water retaining structures such as dams and levees. Of particular concern for designers are the flow quantity, uplift pressures, and hydraulic gradients that might lead to internal erosion. Numerical analysis of seepage and erosion is particularly problematic on account of the high uncertainty associated with the value of soil permeability and additional parameters associated with constitutive models for erosion. Apart from the huge range of soil permeability values that can vary by many orders of magnitude according to grain size, permeability is well-known to have the highest coefficient of variation of any routine soil property. This uncertainty in characterizing soil properties makes seepage problems particularly well-suited to a probabilistic approach. Some of the earliest attempts at probabilistic geotechnical analysis were directed at seepage problems, so this session is a timely opportunity for researchers and practitioners to share their latest developments and applications in this important area of civil engineering. Depending on the number of abstract submissions on seepage and erosion-related topics, we anticipate offering 2 conventional sessions, each with 6, 15 minute presentations. Submissions are encouraged particularly in the following areas: (1) new probabilistic analysis methods, (2) probabilistic analysis in practice, and (3) challenges and opportunities for analysis of seepage and erosion.
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