Slope failure by unstable breaching

During the last decades, the breaching process as a production mechanism for stationary suction dredgers has become less important and therefore little research has been directed towards this process. It was not very well known as a cause of slope failures outside the dredging community until some years ago, but is now more accepted as a failure mechanism in the geotechnical world. In this paper the unstable breaching mechanism is explained. The breaching process is simulated using a two-dimensional computational fluid dynamics code with a special boundary condition at the bed. This leads to a better understanding of the process and how unstable situations can be predicted.