Reliable Assessment of Rainfall-Induced Slope Instability

Abstract

Many slope failures are induced by rainfall infiltration. A lot of recent researches are therefore focused on rainfall-induced slope instability and the rainfall infiltration is recognized as the important triggering factor. The rainfall infiltrates into the soil slope and makes the matric suction lost in the slope and even the positive pore water pressure develops near the surface of the slope. They decrease the resisting shear strength. In Korea, a few public institutions suggested conservative slope design guidelines that assume a fully saturated soil condition. However, this assumption is irrelevant and sometimes soil properties are misused in the slope design method to fulfill the requirement. In this study, a more relevant slope stability evaluation method is suggested to take into account the real rainfall infiltration phenomenon. Unsaturated soil properties such as shear strength, soil-water characteristic curve and permeability for Korean weathered soils were obtained by laboratory tests and also estimated by artificial neural network models. For real-time assessment of slope instability, failure warning criteria of slope based on deterministic and probabilistic analyses were introduced to complement uncertainties of field measurement data. The slope stability evaluation technique can be combined with field measurement data of important factors, such as matric suction and water content, to develop an early warning system for probably unstable slopes due to the rainfall.