Effect of Rainfall Infiltration on the Stability of Compacted Embankments
Publication: International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 22, Issue 7
Abstract
Rainfall infiltration causes the collapse of unsaturated embankments due to loss of suction. In this paper, the Barcelona Basic Model (BBM), a constitutive model developed for unsaturated soils, was implemented in Fast Lagrangian Analysis of Continua (FLAC) for simulating the effect of varying rainfall intensities on compacted embankments. It was observed that large vertical deformations occur and considerably high positive pore-water pressures get developed, accounting for the collapse of an embankment. The results also show that rainfall intensity and duration affect the slope stability. A comparison was made between the results obtained using the Mohr–Coulomb model and BBM. It was found that the soil undergoes larger deformations when modeled using BBM as BBM accurately models the loss of suction upon saturation. Reliability analysis of embankment shows that probabilistic analysis provides a better assessment of slope stability rather than the factor of safety and shows that suction and hydraulic conductivity are critical parameters influencing slope reliability for unsaturated soil slope embankments.
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Acknowledgments
The present work is a part of the Ph.D. research work of the first author. The authors would like to present their gratitude to the editor and reviewers for carefully reviewing the manuscript and providing valuable suggestions.
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Published In
International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 22 • Issue 7 • July 2022
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© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 30, 2021
Accepted: Feb 8, 2022
Published online: May 6, 2022
Published in print: Jul 1, 2022
Discussion open until: Oct 6, 2022
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