Abstract
AbstractRainfall is one of the major causes of slope failures occurring in residual soils, which are of concern to geotechnical engineers. Naturally, soil is non-homogeneous in nature with different mechanical and hydraulic properties such as shear strength, soil–water characteristic curve, saturated permeability and unsaturated permeability functions. Negative pore-water pressure or matric suction plays an important role in the evaluation of stability of earth slopes. With rainfall infiltration, the pore-water pressure changes and hence affects its stability. A numerical model of a two-layered non-homogeneous slope is prepared with different hydraulic properties. An unsaturated seepage analysis with infiltration is performed in the finite element framework. With the pore pressures obtained from the seepage analysis, a finite slope stability analysis is performed in the limit equilibrium framework. The pore-water pressure profiles of the two-layered slope are studied with different rainfall intensities. The negative pore-water pressures are reduced to zero at a much shallow depth for higher rainfall intensity, thus reducing its safety factor rapidly. It is also observed that at high rainfall intensity, the two-layered slope suffers a shallow slope failure. KeywordsNon-homogeneous slopeSWCCPore-water pressureCritical slip surface
Published Version
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