An approach to reseach of the breaching process

Abstract

Breaching has been an important mechanism for sand suction dredging for a long time. A special kind of breaching, unstable breaching, has recently been identified as a possible failure mechanism for sandy submerged slopes. This has increased the interest into the breaching process. At the Delft University of Technology we have started a research project on the subject of unstable breaching. In this paper we discuss the results obtained so far. First, we discuss a concept for laboratory experiments into the phenomena. Second, we propose a new numerical model, designed to investigate unstable breaching.