• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.38 no.3 s.172
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• pp.305-317
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• 2005

This study addresses the preliminary results of rock slope stability analyses including hazard assessments for slope failure conducted on the selected sections of rural road cut slope which are about 4 km long. The study area is located in the Mt. Chuntae northeast of Busan and mainly composed of Cretaceous rhyolitic ash-flow tuff', fallout tuff, rhyolitc and andesite. The volcanic rock mass in the area has a number of discontinuities that produce a potentially unstable slope, as the present cut slope is more than 70 degrees in most of the slope sections. Discontinuity geometry data were collected at selected 8 scanline sections and analyzed to estimate important discontinuity geometry parameters to perform rock slope kinematic and block theory analyses. Kinematic analysis for plane sliding has resulted in maximum safe slope angles greater than $65^{\circ}$ for most of the discontinuities. For most of the wedges, maximum safe cut slope angles greater than $45^{\circ}$ were obtained. Maximum safe slope angles greater than 80" were obtained fur most of the discontinuities in the toppling case. The block theory analysis resulted in the identification of potential key blocks (type II) in the SL4, SL5, SL6 and SL8 sections. The chance of sliding taking place through a type ll block under a combined gravitational and external loading is quite high in the investigated area. The results support in-field observations of a potentially unstable slope that could become hazardous under external forces. The results obtained through limit equilibrium slope stability analyses show how a stable slope can become an unstable slope as the water pressure acting on joints increases and how a stable slope under Barton's shear strength criterion can fail as the worst case scenario of using Mohr-Coulomb criterion.