• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.51-57
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• 2007

In the design of slopes during rainfall, the groundwater level is assumed to be located at the ground surface, based on the change in characteristics of rainfall. In addition, stability investigations are performed for large cut slopes in the design of slopes while standard inclinations specified in the design criteria are applied for the slopes that stability investigations are not performed. In spite of the strengthened criteria of groundwater location, slope failures continuously occur during heavy rainfall, regardless of magnitude of slopes. In order to investigate the cause of the failures, stability investigations have been performed on standard inclination of slopes suggested in the design criteria for both dry and rainfall cases by ground condition in this research. Despite that standard inclination of slopes specified in the design criteria should be stable for both dry and rainfall cases, the results show that standard factor of safety has not been obtained in many cases; more than 50% of total cases for dry cases and more than 65% of total cases for rainfall case. Based on the results, this paper indicates the problems in the current design criteria and proposes the plans for establishment of countermeasure.