Location
Arlington, Virginia
Date
14 Aug 2008, 4:30pm - 6:00pm
Abstract
The two failures of the London Avenue Canal floodwalls contributed largely to the flooding of central New Orleans due to hurricane Katrina. In this paper, both failures are analyzed and compared to each other since the flood defenses are both located on permeable soils. Photo’s observation and calculations are used for the analysis. Both failures are caused by the permeable sand layer below the floodwall that allowed high pore water pressures to develop below the floodwall. However, the south breach seems to be caused by the piping failure mechanism and the north breach by loss of stability. At the South breach, the impermeable top layer was thicker than at the North breach, increasing the stability. The North beach was less vulnerable for piping and the lack of stability caused a large breach. The London Avenue Canal failures are a clear yet tragic example of the failure of flood defenses on permeable soils. The failures show that multiple failure mechanism may occur and since there are many flood defenses on permeable soils world wide, the lessons from Katrina can be used to prevent future catastrophes.
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Meeting Name
6th Conference of the International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering
Publisher
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Document Version
Final Version
Rights
© 2008 Missouri University of Science and Technology, All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
File Type
text
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Kanning, W.; Baars, S. Van; and Vrijling, J. K., "The Stability of Flood Defenses on Permeable Soils: The London Avenue Canal Failures in New Orleans" (2008). International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering. 56.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/icchge/6icchge/session02/56
The Stability of Flood Defenses on Permeable Soils: The London Avenue Canal Failures in New Orleans
Arlington, Virginia
The two failures of the London Avenue Canal floodwalls contributed largely to the flooding of central New Orleans due to hurricane Katrina. In this paper, both failures are analyzed and compared to each other since the flood defenses are both located on permeable soils. Photo’s observation and calculations are used for the analysis. Both failures are caused by the permeable sand layer below the floodwall that allowed high pore water pressures to develop below the floodwall. However, the south breach seems to be caused by the piping failure mechanism and the north breach by loss of stability. At the South breach, the impermeable top layer was thicker than at the North breach, increasing the stability. The North beach was less vulnerable for piping and the lack of stability caused a large breach. The London Avenue Canal failures are a clear yet tragic example of the failure of flood defenses on permeable soils. The failures show that multiple failure mechanism may occur and since there are many flood defenses on permeable soils world wide, the lessons from Katrina can be used to prevent future catastrophes.
