Abstract
In tropical residual soils most hill slope failures are caused by rainfall. It is therefore important to consider dynamic hydrological conditions when attempting to analyze the stability of residual soil slopes. This paper describes a coupled hydrology/stability model that has been developed to overcome the limitations of the standard method of analysis used to investigate stability of tropical soil slopes. A computational hydrology – limit equilibrium stability analysis model is outlined and examples are provided of the model output capabilities in terms of design charts. Although nowadays most realistic problem should be analyzed by computer and stability charts are mainly used to analyze simple slopes, they can be useful for preliminary analysis and enable the designer to quickly assess the sensitivity of a problem to changes in different input parameters.
Highlights
Tropical residual soils have some unique characteristics related to their composition and the environment under which they develop
Most classical concepts related to soil properties and soil behavior have been developed for temperate zone soils, and there has been difficulty in accurately modeling procedures and conditions to which residual soils are subjected[1,2]
When the degree of saturation is less than 85%, it becomes necessary to apply unsaturated soil mechanics principles[4]
Summary
Tropical residual soils have some unique characteristics related to their composition and the environment under which they develop. Anderson[10,11] describes a coupled slope hydrology/stability model that has been developed to overcome the limitations of the standard methods of analysis used to investigate stability of tropical soil slopes. His model takes into account the effect of increase in water table due to infiltration and not the effect of increase in soil strength due to suction. As similar scheme was simulated of the dynamic hydrological condition as it changed in response to rainfall and coupled the generated pore pressures (positive and negative) to stability analysis procedure. The differences in factor of safety by incorporating matric suction ranged from 12% to 35% higher as compared to the conventional slope stability analysis [16]
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