• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.91-103
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• 2009

Slope failure depends upon the climatic features related to related rainfall, structural geology and geomorphological features as well as the variation of the mechanical behaviors of soil constituting a slope. In this paper, among many variables, effects of soil layer thickness on the slope failure process, and variations of matric suction and volumetric water content were observed. When the soil layer is relatively thick, the descending wetting front decreases matric suction and the observed matric suction reaches to "0" value. When the wetting front reaches to the impermeable boundary, the bottom surface of steel soil box, ascending wetting front was observed. This observation can be postulated to be the effects of various sizes of pores. When macro size pores exist, the capillary effects can be reduced and infilling of pore will be limited. The partially filled pores would be filled with water during the ascending of the wetting front, which bounces from the impermeable boundary. This assumption has been assured from the observation of variation of the volumetric water contents at different depth. When the soil layer is thick (thickness = 20 cm), for granular material, erosion is a cause triggering the slope failure. It has been found that the initiation of erosion occurs when the top soil is fully saturated. Meanwhile, when the soil layer is shallow (thickness = 10 cm), slope slides as en mass. The slope failure for this condition occurs when the wetting front reaches to the interface between the soil layer and steel soil box. As the wetting front approaches to the bottom of soil layer, reduction of shear resistance along the boundary and increase of the unit weight due to the infiltration occur and these produce complex effects on the slope failure processes.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.93-101
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• 2005

The formation of slopes is unavoidable under the special circumstance of Korea where $7%$ of the whole area are composed of mountains and civil engineering projects such as road and site developments are increasing with industrial development and horizontal expansions of urban area. Stability of slopes is one of quite important issues under special meteorological characteristics that over two-thirds of annual average rainfall is concentrated in summer season and the localized torrential downpour is getting more frequent recently. As a result of these circumstances, partial slope failures by debris flow of the high water content soils occur frequently in cut soil slopes. In this case of debris flow slope failure, slope declination method is selected fur the stable recovery because it is impossible to recover entirely by existing recovery methods. Seeding or special grass planting methods are followed separately without exception. The method by which entire recover with bigger stability ratio would be possible and grass planting work would be done simultaneously is developed. For debris flow failure slopes, this study secured the safety of slopes by preventing the inflow of rainwater and scour using geosynthetics-reinforced embankment, and created nature-friendly slopes by planting trees on the slopes.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.21 no.8
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• pp.95-105
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• 2005

Generally, a modified version of limit equilibrium method can be used to evaluate a slope stability of the geosynthetic reinforced soil slopes. In most cases, resisting effects of geosynthetic reinforcement are dealt with considering an increased shear strength on the potential slip surface. However, it is not clear that the methods satisfy all three equilibrium equations. As we know, the pattern of normal stress distribution along the slip surface is the key factor in calculating the safety factor of slopes. In this study, the new slope stability analysis method in which not only reinforcing effects of geosynthetics can be considered but also all three equilibrium equations can be satisfied was proposed with assuming the normal stress distribution along the slip surface as quadratic curve with horizontal $\chi-coordinate$. A number of illustrative examples, including published slope stability analysis examples for the reinforced and unreinforced soil slopes, loading test of large scale reinforced earth wall and centrifuge model tests on the geotextile reinforced soil slopes, were analyzed. As a result, it is shown that the newly suggested method yields a relatively accurate factor of safety for the reinforced and unreinforced soil slopes.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.37 no.9
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• pp.5-12
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• 2021

Pseudo-static slope stability analysis method is widely used in engineering practice to calculate the seismic factor of safety of slope subjected to earthquake ground motions. Although the dynamic analysis method is well recognized to have the primary advantage of simulating the stress-strain response of soils, it is not often used in practice because of the difficult in estimating the factor of safety. In this study, a procedure which utilizes the dynamic analysis method to extract the transient dynamic factor of safety is devleoped. This method overcomes the major limitation of the pseudo-static method, which uses an empirically determined seismic coefficient to derive the factor of safety. The proposed method is applied to a slope model and the result is compared with that of the pseudo-static method. It is shown that minimum dynamic factor of safety calculated by the dynamic analysis is slightly larger than that determined from the pseudo-static method. It is also demonstrated that the dynamic factor of safety becomes minimum when the horizontal seismic coefficient and horizontal average acceleration are maximum.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.605-618
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• 2018

Korea follows the slope design criteria during construction. It was enacted by the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs. There are cases where the Soil-nail is designed as a measure to secure slope stability. The arrangement of the soil-nail may be arranged at equal intervals or may be arranged differently depending on the soil failure model. The optimum design of the countermeasure method is determined by securing stability of the slope through optimization of dimensions and shape. However, when uniform nails are placed at low elevations in slopes, the standard safety factor is exceeded, which may hinder economic design. It is preferable to arrange the reinforcement of the nails over the entire slope. When the horizontal spacing of the nails was topology optimized according to the slope height, it was possible to minimize the amount of reinforcement while satisfying the standard safety factor. Since the active load is reduced in the section where the slope height is lowered, the safety factor after reinforcement may be excessively increased. Therefore, the phase optimization method is proposed as an economical optimal design method using the reinforcing shape density. In addition, a relational expression was designed to optimize the horizontal spacing by slope height.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.83-91
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• 2006

Recently, the intensive rainstorm possibly induced by global warming plays a key role on the instability of railway adjacent slopes. The instability of slopes results as covering and loss of railway lines induced by slided soil mass. According to the site investigation on the failed slopes triggered by rainfall, low types of slope failure were observed: shallow, intermediate, gully erosion, and soil-rock interface failures. The observation reveals the different characteristics of slope failure depending on the thickness of soil layer, morphological features of slope, etc. Based upon the observations, flume tests were conducted to analyze the sliding mechanism of each failure. The variables of flume test are soil layer thickness, rainfall intensity, and morphology of slope under the constant condition of the percentage of fine, initial soil moisture content, slope angle and compaction energy. Test results show that shallow failure was mostly observed from the surface of the slope and caused by the soil erosion; in addition, compared to the other types of failure, the occurrence of initial erosion is late, however, the development of erosion is fast. In gully erosion failure, the collected water from the water catchment area helps erosion of the upper soil layer and transfer of residual corestone, which impedes the erosion process once the upper soil layers are eroded and corestone are exposed. The soil-rock interface failure shows the most fast initial erosion process among the failure types. Interestingly, the common feature observed from the different types of failure was the occurrence of the initial deformation near the toe of slopes which implies the existence of surbsurface flow along the downslope direction.