A Study on the Estimation of Stability of Fill Dam by Long-term Electrical Resistivity Monitoring

Resistivity monitoring is based on the fact that a change in the porosity leads to the changes in water content and fine particles, which alter the electrical resistivity. At every embankment dam, internal erosion always occurs as time passes. The internal erosion generally develops into piping over a long time by backward erosion and concentrated leak, and finally leads to dam failure. Resistivity is known to be very sensitive to the changes in porosity in embankment dams. Thus resistivity monitoring is a reasonable method to find out the leakage zone. However, resistivity is strongly influenced by seasonal variation of temperature, TDS of reservoir water and water level. In this paper. we first installed electrodes permanently at the center of the crest. The electrical resistivity monitoring data was acquired every 6 hours from Apr. 3, 2011 to July. 31, 2012. To analyze the characteristics of monitoring data, each resistivity data was calculated from up to 2,950 data sets. The result indicated a seasonal resistivity variation due to related temperature. Finally, a quantitative method to estimate porosities of the embankment dam from the resistivity monitoring data was analyzed. The applicability and reliability were verified and the importance of electrical resistivity monitoring for obtaining reliable result was emphasized.