Abstract
Saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ks) is spatially variable in accumulation landslide sites that exert significant effort onto landslide seepage and deformation behavior. To better understand spatial variability and the effect of Ks on the slide mass of an accumulation landslide, this study introduced the surface nuclear magnetic resonance (SNMR) technology to study a representative reservoir accumulation landslide field in the Three Gorges Reservoir area (TGRA), the Baishuihe landslide, to obtain a series of relative reliable spatial measurements of Ks effectively on the basis of calibration in terms of the field tests measurements. The estimated Ks values were distributed log-normally for the overall landslide mass site with a wide range of 3.00 × 10−6∼7.80 × 10−3 cm/s, which reaches about 3 orders of magnitude. Variogram analysis indicated that the Ks values have the range (A) of 295.89 m and 65.56 m for the overall site and major cross-sectional analysis, respectively. A finite-element seepage-stress analysis associated with a Kriging-interpolated spatial Ks variable calculation model based on the best-fitted theoretical variogram was subsequently performed to study the seepage and deformation behavior of the landslide. The available monitored data and simulated results of the finite-element seepage-stress analysis indicated that the Baishuihe landslide is a progressive landslide, and the main factor influencing the deformation is rainfall and reservoir water fluctuation. This study provides an unconventional framework for studying the heterogeneous geomaterial and contributes to a better understanding of the spatial variation of the hydraulic property of accumulation reservoir landslides at a field scale.
Highlights
Accompanied by the reservoir operation of hydropower projects, reservoir landslides have become a typical geohazard in reservoir areas in the world [1, 2]. e instability of the reservoir landslide may arouse devastating economic and social costs, even the loss of human life
The objective of this study are (1) to apply the surface nuclear magnetic resonance (SNMR) technology to a representative accumulation reservoir landslide in the ree Gorges Reservoir area (TGRA) and estimate spatial Ks values of the subsurface colluvial-deluvial geomaterials based on newest comprehensive geotechnical investigation; (2) to perform descriptive statistics and analyze the spatial variation of the estimated Ks values; and (3) to investigate the effect of spatially variable Ks to the deformation behavior of the landslide under the combinative effect of reservoir water fluctuation and rainfall through a 2D numerical simulation
We investigated the omnidirectional spatial variable patterns for ln Ks values of the overall site and major pro le because of the insu cient data pairs along some characteristic directions. e scale e ect caused by the di erent data intervals along vertical and horizontal directions was taken into consideration by calculating di erent experimental variograms, which was characterized by small-scale variograms and large-scale variograms, respectively
Summary
Accompanied by the reservoir operation of hydropower projects, reservoir landslides have become a typical geohazard in reservoir areas in the world [1, 2]. e instability of the reservoir landslide may arouse devastating economic and social costs, even the loss of human life. E variations of the values derived from the characteristics of discontinuity, heterogeneity, and anisotropy have not been taken into account in this assumption [11]. In this sense, the understanding of spatial variability of hydrological properties. Considerable research studies have been devoted to investigate the regional-scale variation, probability distribution pattern, and geostatistic-based spatial variation of measured Ks values of different geomaterials, such as loessial soil [10, 11], river sediments [12,13,14], alluvial floodplains [15], and costal farmlands [16]. The research involving Ks field-scale spatial variation of the accumulation reservoir landslide is still insufficient
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