alireza babaeian amini

Recently, a unique attraction exists in determining the breach and flow parameters due to the irreparable damages caused by embankment failures. In this paper, new relationships are established for determining the peak outflow discharge during an embankment failure using soft computing and regression analysis. The accuracy of these equations is also increased by considering the separate effects of overtopping and non-overtopping failure cases. Experimental models with different geometries and technical properties have been constructed and studied during the overtopping failure in laboratory. So, the breach and hydraulic characteristics are extracted and analyzed, and the output hydrograph components were compared with several historical and hypothetical failures obtained from the BREACH mathematical model. The effect of particle diameter on the erodibility of granular dams and dimensionless ratios of breach characteristics were also investigated in this study. New relationships are presented based on the hydraulic and breach characteristics for predicting the breach geometry and eroded volume. The performance and capability of equations are enhanced by considering three different datasets of historical, experimental, and hypothetical failure of real dams located in the north-west provinces of Iran. The effectiveness of the presented relations is compared with the existing equations.