Review on overtopping failure and flood evolution of earth-rock dams

Flood events caused by the overtopping failure of earth-rock dams often lead to catastrophic disasters. Therefore, examining the cause of the dam failure and studying the subsequent flood evolution processes are extremely important for disaster prevention and mitigation. This work reviewed the phenomena and mechanism of the overtopping failure of earth-rock dams and recent researches using physical experiments and numerical simulations. The scale design of physical model test is discussed, and the research findings of dam break experiments under different scales, dam types, and experimental conditions are summarized. Research progresses of numerical simulations of dam breaks using parametric models, simplified physically-based models, and detailed physically-based models are reviewed. Advances in numerical and experimental studies of the evolution of flood caused by dam failure are highlighted. After reviewing the literature, some future research directions are proposed. They include examining the influence of river boundary conditions on dam failure and the subsequent flood propagation processes, reconciling the mechanism of the failure of heterogeneous earth-rock dams, investigating the erosion law of sediment-laden flow during dam breaks, studying the downstream scouring and silting and riverbed sediment sorting after dam failure, and evaluating the impact of dam failure on the aquatic ecosystems.