CRC Press Hydraulics of Levee Overtopping (IAHR Monographs)

Earthen levees are extensively used to protect the population and infrastructure from periodic floods and high water due to storm surges. The causes of failure of levees include overtopping, surface erosion, internal erosion, and slope instability. Overtopping may occur during periods of flooding due to insufficient freeboard. The most problematic situation involves the levee being overtopped by both surge and waves when the surge level exceeds the levee crest elevation with accompanying wave overtopping. Overtopping of levees produces fast-flowing, turbulent water velocities on the landward-side slope that can potentially damage the protective grass covering and expose the underlying soil to erosion. If overtopping continues long enough, the erosion may eventually result in loss of levee crest elevation and possibly breaching of the protective structure. Hence, protecting levees from erosion by surge overflow and wave overtopping is necessary to assure a viable and safe levee system. This book presents a cutting-edge approach to understanding overtopping hydraulics under negative free board of earthen levees, and to the study of levee reinforcing methods. Combining soil erosion test, full-scale laboratory overtopping hydraulics test, and numerical modeling for the turbulent overtopping hydraulics. It provides an analysis that integrates the mechanical and hydraulic processes governing levee overtopping occurrences and engineering approaches to reinforce overtopped levees. Topics covered: surge overflow, wave overtopping and their combination, full-scale hydraulic tests, erosion tests, overtopping hydraulics, overtopping discharge, and turbulent analysis. This is an invaluable resource for graduate students and researchers working on levee design, water resource engineering, hydraulic engineering, and coastal engineering, and for professionals in the field of civil and environmental engineering, and natural hazard analysis. About the Author Dr. Lin Li is Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Jackson State University. He got his PhD from University of Wisconsin-Madison under Prof. Craig Benson in 2004. After 1 year postdoc working experience with Prof. Tuncer Edil in 2005, he started his academic career in Jackson State University. He teaches geotechnical engineering courses, including foundation engineering, unsaturated soil mechanics, geoenvironmental engineering, advanced soil mechanics, and soil dynamics. His expertise is in innovative levee testing and protection, bio-mediated ground improvement, sustainable infrastructure and geo-environmental area. He has been principal investigator or co-principal investigator of more than fifteen major research grants from federal and state agencies with total funding amounts of $4.1 Million, including National Science Foundation, Department of Homeland Security, US Army Corps of Engineer, US Department of Transportation, Mississippi DOT, Recycled Materials Resource Center under Federal Highway Administration, Institute for Multimodal Transportation under Federal Transit Administration, mostly in the area of geotechnical engineering. Dr. Li is the author or co-author of more than 105 peer-reviewed published articles with total citation of 1957 (h-index 10). With funding support from DHS, Dr. Li’s research focuses on levee protection during the Hurricane overtopping. He has published 30 scientific papers about innovative levee strengthening and testing under full scale overtopping conditions. With funding support from NSF, Dr. Li’s research on bio-mediated ground improvement leads to more than 10 SCI-index journal articles. He got HEADWAE Award from State of Mississippi in 2017, Faculty Excellence Award Richard from JSU in 2014, and in 2015, Richard S. Ladd D18 Standards Development Award from ASTM for his effort in ASTM D7762 development. He is editorial board member of Journal of Geotechnical and Geological Enginee