Abstract
The road that crosses the Haibat Sultan Mountain in the northern part of Iraq; is one of the dangerous roads in this region. To perform a slope stability analysis for the dangerous parts of the road, we have used Bejerman’s Method. We have reviewed satellite images of the road and all those potential areas were checked in the field; accordingly, eleven stations were recognized. Landslide Possibility Index was determined at the studied stations following Bejerman’s field method. The road climbs the southern face (dip slope) of the mountain through very hard carbonate rocks of the Pila Spi Formation, where the bedding planes daylight in the slope face near the road cuts. This produced many large landslides. Along the northern face of the mountain, the road runs through soft clastic rocks where joint planes in the rock mass intersect and daylight in the slope face near the road cut. In order to prevent future wedge failures, a 30 m offset was created from the toe of the slope to the road. In almost all cases, the Landslide Possibility Index indicated a moderate to very high likelihood for failure along all road cuts.
Highlights
The roads in the northern part of Iraq are mainly mountainous with high ascending and descending steep mountain slopes where haphazard road cuts have created instability problems and/or potential areas for sliding
The results from the current study indicate that unstable slopes exist along the studied parts of the road representing potential areas for landslides
Section C – D suffers from mass wasting with occasional wedge failure due to the presence of soft, well bedded and intensely jointed claystone beds of the Gercus Formation; the mass wasting products are in the form of small rock fragments
Summary
The roads in the northern part of Iraq are mainly mountainous with high ascending and descending steep mountain slopes where haphazard road cuts have created instability problems and/or potential areas for sliding. Among those roads is the road that crosses Haibat Sultan Mountain, north of Koya town, central northern part of Iraq that exhibits many examples of slope instability cases. This is mainly due to haphazard road construction without scientific consideration of the type of the rocks, their hardness and thicknesses, and the orientation of bedding, joints, fractures and faults, which all have an impact on the rock strength and stability of the slopes.
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