A case study of the Tangjiashan landslide dam-break

The Tangjiashan landslide dam failed on June 10, 2008, which was the largest one formed during the Wenchuan earthquake in China. No human lives were lost in this dam failure. This paper presents a description of the dam, including the dam geometry, the hydrograph and the reservoir capacity, the diversion channel and the drainage from the lake. Several empirical models are applied to predict the breach parameters, the peak outflows and the reservoir volumes during this breach event. The main objective of the study is to compare various prediction models and to make recommendation of the best model for the prediction of the breach width, the failure time, and the peak outflow. The breach widths predicted by the Froehlich methods with considerations of the reservoir storages and the effect of failure mode are considered to be more reasonable. All prediction methods discussed in this paper are found to underestimate the breach formation time due to the complex material and the large thickness of the dam. The results from the soil conservation services (SCS) method compare well with the observed peak outflow. The Marone method in combination with the coefficient expressions proposed by Macchione gives excellent results in the simulation of the reservoir volume-level curve.