• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.57-65
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• 2007

Slope collapse occurs mostly at the rainy season or thawing season in Korea. From a engineer point of view, the design criterion in recent of soil slopes during the rainfall have a conservative tendency because a slope stability is evaluated in the condition that ground water level is located in the surface. However, for the rational design of soil slopes during rainfall, the raining conditions and the unsaturated soil characteristics of soil slopes have to be considered. For the unsaturated soil characteristics of soil slopes, the laboratory tests for unsaturated soils and the seepage analyses for the raining conditions have to be performed. Due to these difficulties, a conservative design of soil slopes in the current design criterion has been carried out. In this paper, therefore, a simple design method is proposed. The method is considered to the unsaturated soil characteristics and the results of seepage analysis without numerical analysis. To verify the suggested design method, it is compared with both analysis results by current design criterion and analysis results based on the seepage analysis. Through the comparative study, it was found that the current design criterion has been excessively conservative. Hence, simple design method in this study was evaluated as the rational design for the soil slopes during rainfall.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.641-647
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• 2000

한반도 중부지방의 사면형성과정을 검토하기 위하여 이 지역에 광범위하게 분포하는 쥬라기의 화강암과 선캄브리아기의 편마암으로 구성된 산지 소유역에서 수문관측을 실시하였다. 화강암 유역의 면적은 0.0546$\textrm{km}^2$이며, 기복비는 0.35이다. 편마암 유역은 다소 넓어 면적은 0.0754$\textrm{km}^2$이나 기복비는 0.36으로 거의 같다. 두 유역의 사면은 모두 사림으로 피복되어 있다. 관입시험 결과에 의하면 화강암유역 토층의 층후는 20cm 이하로 얇고 도처에 기반암이 보출된다. 반면에 편마암 유역의 층후는 50cm 이상으로 상대적으로 두껍게 나타난다. 관측은 1999년 5월부터 시작하였으며, 현재도 계속되고 있다. 강우에 대한 유출방응은 편마암 유역이 화강암 유역에 비하여 신속하게 나타난다. 첨두유량과 기저유량 모두 화강암유역보다는 편마암유역에 전반적으로 높게 관측되어 편마암 유역 사면에서의 저류량이 큰 것으로 생각된다. 또한 편마암사면에서 우수의 체류시간을 반영하여 전기전도도는 편마암 유역이 화강암유역보다 2배 정도 높게 관측된다.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.24 no.9
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• pp.5-13
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• 2023

Cement-based reinforcement materials, which are representative slope reinforcement materials, can cause contamination of ground and groundwater when ground injection or surface application is applied. Accordingly, slope reinforcement materials using eco-friendly biopolymers are attracting attention as a means of replacing existing materials, but the biopolymers currently used are easily dissolved when exposed to groundwater or rainfall environments, reducing strength. In order to solve this problem, the cross-linking of protein between sodium casein and Transglutaminase (TGase, C₂₀H₁₆N₄O₂S₂) was used to increase the water resistance of biopolymers, and a rainfall slope test was conducted to evaluate their usability and applicability as a slope reinforcing material. In the case of reinforcement with only sodium casein, the precipitation dissolved sodium casein, and the slope was completely destroyed in 1 hour. On the other hand, it was observed that the slope reinforced by adding a small amount of TGase (0.5%) do not collapse even after 80 hours of rainfall duration due to increased water resistance. Strength and water resistance increases due to the addition of a small amount of TGase, and its applicability as an eco-friendly reinforcement is confirmed.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.71-79
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• 2011

In this study, the variation of wetting front and ground water level at the embankment constructed in the Saemangeum area were predicted considering rainfall duration times and the slope stability analysis of the embankment was carried out according to prediction results of wetting front and ground water level. The embankment was formed by dredging soils. A suction stress, a cohesion and a frictional angle of dreding soils measured by soil tests were applied to estimate the unsaturated soil properties. According to the analysis results of the wetting front and the ground water level for various rainfall duration time, the wetting front began to descend from the upper part of embankment at the beginning time of rainfall and after 1 hour of rainfall duration time. After that, the ground water level continued to ascend as the rainfall duration time was getting longer. After rainfall, the ground water level was distributed at a certain depth, and the ground water level was gradually descending as time goes by. According to the slope stability analysis of the embankment considering the variation of the wetting front and the ground water level, the safety factor of slope was rapidly reduced as the rainfall began to infiltrate into the ground, and the minimum safety factor of slope was estimated after 24 hours of rainfall duration time. Meanwhile, the safety factor of slope was increased with regaining the matric suction in the ground after rainfall.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.9-17
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• 2005

A set of soil samples were picked up from a failed slope formed by rainfall in limestone zone in Jangseong-gun, Jeonnam, Korea, to find out its physical and mechanical characteristics for this study, and variation of safety factor depending on slope inclination was defined by analysing slope stability affected by rainfall. Decomposed limestone soil in the research area is composed of quartz, orthoclase, gibbsite, geothite, etc., with specific gravity of 2.73, and this soil is included in SC by unified soil classification system. Calcium ingredient decreased remarkably during weathering at its mother rock. Coefficient of permeability is 2.56×10/sup -4/ cm/ sec, similar to its value of silty clay. Cohesion decreases remarkably from 3.0 t/ ㎡ to 0.72 t/ ㎡, and Φ value of internal friction angle tends to decrease as it turns to be saturated soil from partial saturated soil in the shear test. To analyze slope stability affected by rainfall, it is reasonable to seek seepage depth with reference to rainfall＊ intensity. In the slope stability analysis, when the seepage depth is the larger, its safety factor is the less, which makes the slope unstable. Comparing with minimum safety factor, 1.5 of cut slope in consideration of the seep-age line, safety factor is found to be satisfactory only when inclination of cut slope of decomposed limestone soil is more than 1：1.2 slope at least considering rainfall. It is also found that decrease of cohesion has great effect on decline of safety factor of slope while partial saturated soil turns to be saturated soil.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.331-337
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• 2015

A new technique is presented to detect unstable slope behavior, based on Hotelling's T² analysis of pore pressure and water content obtained during flume tests using granitic and gneissic weathered soils. Three sets of pore pressure-water content values were simultaneously obtained during each test, and T² statistics at the 90.0% and 95.0% confidence levels were calculated based on the correlations between values. The results show that unsuccessful detection of some local failures of the flume slope depended on the sensor position. In the case of global slope failures, anomalous behavior was detected between several hundred and several thousand seconds before the event as T² statistics exceeded the confidence interval 90%. Hotelling's T² analysis provides a single control criterion because it enables correlations between diverse measured values within the same slope; the criterion also includes stepwise criteria for a forecasting and warning system based on confidence levels.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.20 no.12
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• pp.49-55
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• 2019

Slope failure analysis entails proper understanding of various factors as well as the characteristics of ground conditions, which are difficult to achieve due to technological limits. Despite a number of past studies to clarify possible factors triggering slope failures, the impact of rainfall characteristics and infiltration rate, which are the key to estimation of slope stability in wet condition, on slope failures still remains unclear. This study has estimated permeability against various unit weights of soil based on constant head permeability tests using Jumunjin standard silica sand. One dimensional infiltration tests were conducted to estimate the infiltration capacity and the amount of infiltration taking into account the permeability and rainfall intensity. The applicability of existing empirical equations for the estimation of infiltration to granular soils was verified on the basis of the test results.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.33 no.9
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• pp.5-22
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• 2017

The procedure that combines the result of infiltration analysis into stability analysis based on the limit equilibrium method is widely used to evaluate the impact of rainfall infiltration on slope stability. Accurate prediction of rainfall infiltration is essential to the prediction of landslides caused by rainfall, requires to obtain accurate unsaturated hydraulic properties of the soil. Among the unsaturated hydraulic characteristics of the soil, the importance of the soil-water characteristic curve describing the retained water characteristics of the soil is relatively well known and the measurement by test method to obtain the SWCC is gradually increasing. However, it takes a lot of time and expenses to experimentally measure the unsaturated conductivity characteristics of the soil. Therefore, it is common practice to estimate the hydraulic conductivity function from the SWCC. Although it is widely known that the SWCC has a great influence on rainfall infiltration, studies on the effect of the hydraulic conductivity function estimated from the SWCC on rainfall infiltration are very limited. In this study, we explained how the estimation model of the hydraulic conductivity function affects rainfall infiltration and slope stability analysis. To this end, one-dimensional infiltration analysis and slope stability analysis were conducted by using the data on the SWCC of weathered granite soil widely distributed in Korea. The applicability of each estimation model is discussed through review of the analysis results.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.28 no.9
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• pp.23-30
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• 2012

This paper is research results of slope stability analysis associated with seepage infiltration for unsaturated soil in debris-flow occurrence slopes. Site investigations were carried out in two slopes, located at Inje in Kangwon province where debris flow occurred in 2006 and at Yangpyung in Kyeunggi province where it occurred in 2010. For unsaturated soil sampled at the zone of debris-flow initiation, soil water characteristic curves with tempe pressure cells and shear strength parameters with newly designed shear strength apparatus were obtained respectively. The commertially available software SEEP/W was used to analyze seepage infiltration in unsaturated soil, based on their properties obtained from test results and the actual rainfall data at the moment of debris flow occurrence, and slope stability analysis with the program of SLOPE/W, associated with results of seepage analysis, was performed to simulate slope failure. As results of this research, seepage infiltration to unsaturated soil due to intensive rainfall was found to cause increase of ground water table as well as degree of saturation. Through this research slope stability analysis for unsaturated soil, considering the actual rainfall characteristic, might be a reasonable method of investigating characteristics of debris flow behavior, in particular, the moment of debris flow occurrence.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.343-351
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• 2012

This study proposes a modified equation to calculate the factor of safety for an infinite slope considering the saturation depth ratio as a new variable calculated from rainfall infiltration into unsaturated soil. For the proposed equation, this study introduces the concepts of the saturation depth ratio and subsurface flow depth. Analysis of the factor of safety for an infinite slope is conducted by the sequential calculation of the effective upslope contributing area, subsurface flow depth, and the saturation depth ratio based on quasi-dynamic wetness index theory. The calculation process makes it possible to understand changes in the factor of safety and the infiltration behavior of individual rainfall events. This study analyzes stability changes in an infinite slope, considering the saturation depth ratio of soil, based on the proposed equation and the results of soil column tests performed by Park et al. (2011 a). The analysis results show that changes in the factor of safety are dependent on the saturation depth ratio, which reflects the rainfall infiltration into unsaturated weathered gneiss soil. Under continuous rainfall with intensities of 20 and 50 mm/h, the time taken for the factor of safety to decrease to less than 1.3 was 2.86-5.38 hours and 1.34-2.92 hours, respectively; in the case of repeated rainfall events, the time taken was between 3.27 and 5.61 hours. The results demonstrate that it is possible to understand changes in the factor of safety for an infinite slope dependent on the saturation depth ratio.