Abstract
When constructing flood protection structures such as river levees, oftentimes due to various factors engineers must design composite structures, i.e., reinforced earthen structures which comply with all the stability criteria. The most common way of reinforcing such structures is the usage of geosynthetics, or mostly geogrids when talking about stability. Since geosynthetics are man-made materials produced in a controlled environment and go through quality control measures, their characteristics contain a negligible amount of uncertainty compared to natural soils. However, geosynthetic handling, their installation in the levee, and their long-term degradation can all have significant effects of variable magnitude on geosynthetic characteristics. These effects and their variability can be considered as random variables, which can then be used in probabilistic analyses together with soil properties. To investigate the effects of the geogrid’s resistance variability on slope stability compared to soil properties variability, probabilistic analyses are conducted on a river levee in northern Croatia. It is found that the geogrid’s variability generally has very little effect on the total uncertainty compared to the friction angle’s variability, but out of the three geogrid layers used the top grid has the most influence.
Highlights
River levees for flood protection are structures usually made from earthfill material, and their cross section can be made up of multiple distinct parts, which serve specific purposes in the protection from high waters
Even though levees are characterized by a number of failure mechanisms [32,33], and that about half of earth embankment failures occur as a result of processes related to piping [34], this study considers only the slope stability of a reconstructed and reinforced river levee
The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the sensitivity of reinforced levees to rising water levels and uncertainties in geotechnical materials, while promoting the usage of probabilistic analyses which can take those uncertainties into consideration
Summary
River levees for flood protection are structures usually made from earthfill material, and their cross section can be made up of multiple distinct parts, which serve specific purposes in the protection from high waters. Due to cadastral parcels owned by the investor, stability cannot be ensured for required crown heights corresponding to defined return periods of flood events by using conventional solutions due to the need of building steep slopes to fit the levee into the parcel width This issue is commonly solved by introducing ground reinforcement techniques that allow for steeper slopes. Their benefit has been shown in decreasing settlement of levees on soft soil [11] and increasing slope stability [12], or both Their effects have been studied under undrained [13,14], partially drained [14], and drained [15] conditions, during and after embankment construction. Zheng et al [17] have used stone columns in conjunction with geosynthetics to achieve stable embankments on soft soil and have studied their interaction
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