• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.17-25
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• 2005

This paper presents a case history of a geosynthetics-reinforced segmental retaining wall, which collapsed during a sever rainfall immediately after the completion of the wall construction. In an attempt to identify possible causes for the collapse, a comprehensive investigation was carried out including physical and strength tests on the backfill, stability analyses on the as-built design based on the current design approaches, and slope stability analyses with pore pressure consideration. The investigation revealed that the inappropriate as-built design and the bad-quality backfill were mainly responsible for the collapse. This paper describes the site condition including wall design, details of the results of investigation and finally, lessons learned. Practical significance of the findings from this study is also discussed.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2015.05a
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• pp.245-245
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• 2015

In the recent years, due to long-lasting heavy rainfall events, a large number of landslides have been observed in the mountainous area of the world. Such landslides can also form a dam as it blocks the course of a river, which may burst and cause a catastrophic flood. Numerical analysis of landslide dam formation is rarely available, while laboratory experimental studies often use assumed shape to analyze the landslide dam failure and flood hydraulics in downstream. In this study, both experimental and numerical studies have been carried out to investigate the formation of landslide dam. Two case laboratory experiments were conducted in two flumes simultaneously. The first flume (2.0 m 0.6 m 0.5 m) was set at $22^{\circ}$ and $27^{\circ}$ slope to generate the landslide using rainfall intensity of 70.0 mm/hr. On the other hand, the second flume (1.5 m 0.25 m 0.3 m) was set perpendicularly at the downstream end of the first flume to receive the landslide mass forming landslide dam. The formation of landslide dam was observed at $15^{\circ}$ slope of the second flume. The whole processes including the landslide initiation and movement of the landslide mass into the second channel was captured by three digital cameras. In numerical analysis, a two-dimensional (2D) seepage flow model, a 2D slope stability model (Spencer method) and a 2D landslide dam-geometry evaluation model were coupled as a single unit. This developed model can determine the landslide occurrence time, the failure mass and the geometry of landslide dam deposited in the second channel. The data obtained from numerical simulation results has good agreement with the experimental measurements.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.28 no.11
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• pp.69-78
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• 2012

Conventional numerical analysis for rainfall-induced slope stability has been estimated by separating seepage and stress-strain behavior, respectively. Many researchers' models from commercial softwares and literatures define that partially saturated permeability is the only function of degree of saturation (or matrix suction) and then they do not consider hydraulic-mechanical characteristics for the analysis. However, in practice, the water flow processes in a deformable soil are influenced by soil skeleton movement and the pore water pressure changed due to seepage will lead to changes in stress and to deformation of a soil. The relationship between seepage and soil behavior causes a change of partially saturated permeability as well as saturated permeability with the lapse of time. Instability of partially saturated soil slopes due to infiltration would be analyzed from reduction of negative pore water pressure calculating the process of water flow based on predicted partially saturated permeability. Therefore, partially saturated permeability should be defined by the function of degree of saturation (or matric suction) and porosity. The paper presents the comparison between staggered and monolithic coupled analysis regarding seepage and stress deformation problems. As a result, the decrease in matric suction on soil slope from monolithic analysis is slower than that from staggered analysis.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.545-554
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• 2007

Landslides is mainly induced by a heavy rainfall, earthquake ground motion, and some other factors like soil mechanics, morphological-geological factors etc. Since the starting point of the failure seemed to be originated at a construction site in the study, it is meaningful to find out the relationship between the landslide and the construction. For this study, the slope failure factor was examined carefully to see that the original natural slope had vulnerability and that the complex ground had unstability changed by construction. A field survey was conducted on the original ground surface and filled-up ground. A laboratory test was also conducted to determine the geomechanical properties of soil samples. 2D and 3D limit equilibrium analysis with changing groundwater level were conducted at the failure depth using a seismic refraction survey. The result shows that the factor of safety is similar stability under all condition, but unstable under saturated condition.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.54 no.5
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• pp.129-139
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• 2012

Accurate modeling rainfall induced landslide and slope stability requires a detailed knowledge of the distribution of material strength characteristics and suction distribution. However, material properties obtained from the drying cycle are still used for infiltration analysis in many cases, even though material properties of wetting cycle are quite different from those of drying cycle due to hydraulic hysteresis and air occlusion. Therefore, the selection of proper material properties such as soil-water retention curve (SWRC) and the hydraulic conductivity function (HCF) reflecting characteristics of wetting cycle and air occlusion is an essential prerequisite in order to simulate the infiltration phenomena and to predict the suction and water content distribution in unsaturated soils. It is concluded that the simulation of infiltration with material properties from the drying cycle did not reasonably match with experimental outputs. Further discussion is made on how to describe the material properties considering air occlusion during wetting cycle over the entire suction range in order to simulate infiltration phenomena.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.14 no.4 s.41
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• pp.429-442
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• 2004

Landslide of the Whanpyeong Mountain which was occurred at Busan Metropolitan City in 1999 belongs to the category of plane failure. Automatic monitoring system to measure horizontal displacement, pore pressure change and load change has operating from reconstruction stage for evaluating rock slope stability (August, 2000$\~$Feburuary, 2002). As a result of the analysis on the monitoring performance data, it is suggested that infiltrated rain water from pound surface discharges rapidly through cut-slope because pressure head of water decreases rapidly after rainfall while rise of pore pressure is proportional to the amount of rain water. As a result of data analyses for inclinometers and load cells, it seems that slope is stablized be cause ground deformation is rarely detected. The areas especially similar to the study site where landslide is induced by heavy rain fall, change of pore pressure is rapidly analyzed using automatic monitoring system. Therefore, it is considered that automatic monitoring system is very effect for slope stability analysis on important cut-slopes.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.29 no.5C
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• pp.191-198
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• 2009

It has been reported in Korea that surface slope failures in weathered soil are mainly caused by downward infiltration due to rainfall. These failures are triggered by the deepening of the wetting band in soils accompanied by a decrease in matric suction induced by the water infiltration. So, a need exists that these trends of wetting path in gneiss weathered soils, which is commonly found in Korea, are assessed by phenomenological approach. In this paper, numerical analyses of unsaturated soil slope under rainfall conditions are presented based on the wetting path soil-water characteristic curve in the laboratory. As the field SWCC matches well with the wetting path of the laboratory SWCC from the literatures, it seems reasonable to adopt the laboratory wetting SWCC as an upper boundary condition in the assessment of unsaturated slope instability.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.49-59
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• 2014

Rainfall-induced landslides are caused by reduction of effective stress and shear strength due to rainfall infiltration. In order to analyze the susceptibility of landslides, the statistical analysis approach has been used widely but this approach has the limitation which cannot take into account of landslide triggering mechanism. Therefore, the physically based model which can consider the process of landslide occurrence was proposed and commonly used. However, the most previous physically based model analyses evaluate and consider the strength characteristics for saturated soil only in the susceptibility analysis. But the strength parameters for unsaturated soil such as matric suction should be considered with the strength parameters for saturated soil since the shear strength in unsaturated soil also plays important role in the stability of slope. Consequently this study suggested the modified physically based slope model which can evaluate strength characteristics for both of saturated and unsaturated soils. In addition, this study evaluated the thickness of saturated part in slope with rainfall intensity and hydraulic characteristics of slope on the basis of physically based model. In order to evaluate the feasibility, the proposed model was applied to practical example in Jinbu area, Gangwon-do, which was experienced large amount of landslides in July 2006. The ROC graph analysis was used to evaluate the validation of the model, and the analysis results were compared with the results of the previous analysis approach.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.35-45
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• 2014

Limit equilibrium methods of slope stability analysis have been widely adopted mainly due to their simplicity and applicability. However, the conventional methods may not give reliable and convincing results for various geological conditions such as nonhomogeneous and anisotropic soils. Also, they do not take into account soil slope history nor the initial state of stress, for example excavation or fill placement. In contrast to the limit equilibrium analysis, the analysis of deformation and stress distribution by finite element method can deal with the complex loading sequence and the growth of inelastic zone with time. This paper proposes a technique to determine the critical slip surface as well as to calculate the factor of safety for shallow failure on partially saturated soil slope. Based on the effective stress field in finite element analysis, all stresses are estimated at each Gaussian point of elements. The search strategy for a noncircular critical slip surface along weak points is appropriate for rainfall-induced shallow slope failure. The change of unit weight by seepage force has an effect on the horizontal and vertical displacements on the soil slope. The Drucker-Prager failure criterion was adopted for stress-strain relation to calculate coupling hydraulic and mechanical behavior of the partially saturated soil slope.