Numerical and Experimental Study of Coupled Seepage and Heat Transfer in Soil Medium

Seepage analyses from temperature measurement in embankment dam has been employing for long time, where seepage velocity is conventionally computed by modelling of coupled seepage and thermal transfer in soil media with validation of temperature measurement, but it is rarely inspected by seepage velocity observation. This present work simultaneously implemented an experimental program as well as numerical modelling of concurrent seepage and thermal transportation in soil medium in order to investigate the accuracy of the method. Seepage firstly was calibrated by temperature surveillance, then it was validated by seepage monitoring. In this way, seepage velocities in accordance with hydraulic conductivities getting values of 4 × 10⁻⁷ (m/s) and 4.68 × 10⁻⁷ (m/s) were determined. The difference between computation and measurement of seepage velocity was almost smaller than 5%, the minority got values bigger than 5% but they were smaller than 10%. In addition, results from numerical modelling indicated that when suffusion layer occurs, temperature distribution inside the structure is significantly modified, where the effect of seepage on temperature variation in longitudinal direction is stronger than the others one.