Analyses of the Failure of an Embankment Slope and Its Influence on the Pipeline Installed in that Embankment Slope

Pipelines connecting cities sometimes pass through mountainous or hilly areas. In these areas they are frequently buried along/under the road with banking structure. In past earthquakes, some pipelines buried under the roads which were constructed in the slopes of mountains with that structure were exposed by the failures of embankment. However the influence of that failure to the pipeline is not yet studied sufficiently. Therefore, the failure of embankment slope is analyzed in this research by using smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and other methods and the failure’s influences to the pipeline are discussed on the most appropriate analytical results obtained. As a result, it is confirmed that the SPH Method (applying the finite element conversion to SPH particles: strain-based criterion) is the most appropriate method to analyze the effect of slope failure to the pipeline which is buried under the slope. Several remarkable findings from the analytical results by this method are described.