The Study of Terraced Field Erosion Based on the Scale Model in the Loess Plateau under Extreme Rainstorm Conditions

The terraced field was an important way to develop the high-efficiency agriculture on the loess plateau, however, lots of terraced field were heavily damaged by the extreme rainstorm in 2013. Improving the terraced field design standard had become a difficulty in recent research. Based on the field observation and similarity theory, this paper constructed a 1:10 terraced field scale model. The artificial rainfall together with water releasing experiments were designed to simulate the soil erosion process in the scale model. The experimental results revealed that the erosion process of the prototype in extreme rainstorm could be reappeared under the experimental condition that the rainfall intensity was 0.395 mm/min and the experiment lasting time was 2.68 hours. Both the erosion amount and the erosion gully topography of the scale model could be verified by the measured data of the prototype. It can be inferred that the equivalent erosive precipitation of the extreme rainstorm was 636 mm. And it was an effective method to research the soil and water erosion process and the terraced field design standard utilizing the terraced field scale model.