The Effect of the Filling Caves on Loess Slope Stability in Irrigation

Abstract

Landslides are serious geological disasters in loess areas. In order to study the effect of the filling caves in the edge of loess tableland on loess slope stability, the slope stability of sliding from the caves was calculated in irrigation when caves were filled with compacted soil, lime soil, lime-ash soil and non-filled. The results show when caves are filled with lime soil the slope stability is the highest. The effects of variability of the physical and mechanical property indexes of caver filler on loess slope stability were researched further. The results show that (1) the variation coefficients of unit weigh and the shear strength indexes of cave filler lime soil have small effect on the average value of safety reserve, but have big effect on the standard deviation of safety reserve, which explains that the design risks increase while the variation coefficient increasing. (2) with the increase of variation coefficients of unit weigh and the shear strength indexes of cave filler the failure probability increases. Especially when variation coefficient is bigger than 0.3, the failure probability of loess slope is very sensitive to variation coefficient. (3) the effect of correlation coefficient among unit weight and the shear strength indexes of cave filler on failure probability increases with the variation coefficient increasing. It is very important to guarantee filling project. Good quality of filling construction will decrease the variability of cave filler, heighten the stability of loess slope, and decrease the occurrence of loess disasters.