Can we reliably understand full-scale dike failure using smaller-scale experiments?

At iMMC, sustainability isn’t just a slogan; it is our daily scientific reality!

Rising sea levels, more intense storms, and prolonged droughts are placing unprecedented stress on earthen dikes across Europe. Together, these pressures increase the risk of erosion, weaken soils, and turn dike failure from a theoretical risk into a projected reality.

Masoumeh Ebrahimi, supervised by Sandra Soares Frazao, investigates these failure mechanisms through a combination of field and laboratory experiments.

Her research tackles a fundamental question: Can we reliably understand full-scale dike failure using smaller-scale experiments?

To answer this question, she tested several scaled dikes in the lab:
• Medium scale: 1-m-high dike breaching experiments at Hydraulic Research Laboratory of Service public de Wallonie (SPW MI) Mobility & Infrastructures in Châtelet.
• Small scale: High-precision laboratory tests on the LEMSC platform 

By using real-time photogrammetry, erosion and breach formation are captured without disturbing the process—transforming the chaos of failure into quantitative, actionable data.

This scale-series approach aims at bridging the gap between laboratory models and real dikes, ensuring that tomorrow’s flood-adaptation strategies are built on robust, validated science.