Infiltration instabilities in granular materials: theory and experiments

Some of the most important geotechnical challenges involve the interaction of soil and water. Hydraulically induced erosion processes manifesting themselves in dam failure, mud slides and liquefaction are particularly destructive causing enormous damage to infrastructure and buildings. Critical for the prevention of these events is a better understanding of the conditions leading to the formation of unwanted fluid pathways by erosion ultimately leading to the catastrophic failure of whole structures. Although erosion has been the subject of extensive investigations in civil and petroleum engineering, the transient processes characterising the onset of instabilities are still poorly understood. After organising a workshop in November 2012 on this topic, we decided to publish the contributions to the workshop in a special issue of Acta Geotechnica. The following contributions focus largely on the objectives of the workshop, which were as follows: