Hydrothermally Coupled Numerical Modelling of River Embankments: Insights from a Case Study

Thermal monitoring for identifying seepage anomalies in river embankments remains underutilised in contemporary field applications. The reasons for this are multifaceted and include limited awareness and understanding of the technique, as well as the challenges associated with interpreting thermal anomalies and reliably linking them to hydraulic leakage mechanisms. This study provides a concise overview of a practical application of fibre-optic Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) for seepage detection and subsequently focuses on the development and calibration of an advanced coupled hydro-thermal numerical model to assess and validate the technique. Comprehensive hydrological data, including river levels, pore water pressures, and temperatures, were acquired at various locations throughout the system. Both available data and finite element coupled hydro-thermal numerical model was used to perform a sensitivity analysis and provide insights into the underlying thermodynamic processes. This comprehensive approach rep-resents the first step to characterise the numerical modelling of seepage anomalies in levees systems also for the thermal processes.