River floods rank among the most significant natural hazards in Europe, causing substantial economic and human losses
and are frequently due to severe damages endured by water retaining earthworks under extreme weather events. In
this framework, a reliable assessment of the existing river embankments stability conditions for serviceability and limit
states of operations, represents a key aspect to enhance the resilience of these critical infrastructures. Addressing this
challenge requires the estimation of the actual pore water pressure distribution within the earthfill and acknowledging
the role of river stage fluctuations on the groundwater seepage process and stability of the earthworks. Nevertheless,
current engineering practice frequently disregards these aspects, leading to erroneous conclusions on the safety
margins against potential slope instability and overall collapses. This webinar concerns a series of centrifuge tests carried
out on a river embankment model, reconstructed with natural silty sand, subjected to simulated flood events. The
experiments have been conducted at the Schofield Centre of the University of Cambridge, UK, as part of the ‘RES
FLUCTIS’ project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 – GEOLAB programme, and aim at investigating the
hydro-mechanical behaviour and the potential failure mechanisms induced by both stationary and time-dependent
hydraulic boundary conditions. The presentation will specifically focus on technical aspects related to the model
preparation technique, experimental setup, and preliminary findings from the centrifuge tests.