Breach model validation programme - internal erosion initiated breach: model performance review and validation

This project was initiated by Electricité de France with the goal of reviewing, testing and validating the performance of existing, industry applicable breach prediction models, which could predict breach formation caused by internal erosion through dams and levees.
The definition of ‘industry applicable’ is a model which can be applied by practising engineers, is commercially available, ideally with some form of support, uses parameters which can be reasonably estimated or measured, and which takes seconds or minutes to run rather than hours or days.
The definition of an ‘internal erosion initiated breach model’ is a model that simulates growth from a defined internal pipe through to open breach and catastrophic failure of the dam or levee.