Study on Phreatic Line of Zoned Type Earthen Dam with Different Earth Material

The position of the phreatic surface influences the stability of the earth dam because of potential piping due to excessive gradient and sloughing because of the softening and weakening of the soil mass as it touches the downstream slope. When the pervious earth material are placed at outer and impervious earth materials are placed at central portion of the earthen dam, these type of dam are called Zone type earthen dam. The main advantage of this type of dam is that, it does not require huge amount of same earth materials, Central impervious core material are more effective to resist the seepage through the dam body. In this paper a laboratory model is constructed and analysis with an intension to keep the stability of the zone type earth dam against seepage of water with different pool level. The experimental arrangement, data acquisition system and variable measures in the scale down model study in smooth bed are given below. Boards are kept 10 mm to carry forward the experiment.