• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
• /
• 2015.05a
• /
• pp.214-214
• /
• 2015

Rainfall induced landslides is one of the most devastating natural disasters acting on mountainous areas. In Korea, landslide damage areas increase significantly from 1990s to 2000s due to the increase of both rainfall intensity and rainy days in addition with haphazard land development. This study was carried out based on the application of TRIGRS unsaturated (Transient Rainfall Infiltration and Grid-based Regional Slope stability analysis), a Fortran coded, physically based, and numerical model that can predict landslides for areas where are prone to shallow precipitation. Using TRIGRS combining with the geographic information system (GIS) framework, the landslide incident happened on 27th, July 2011 in Mt. Umyeon in Seoul was modeled. The predicted results which were raster maps showed values of the factors of safety on every pixel at different time steps show a strong agreement with to the observed actual landslide scars in both time and locations. Although some limitations of the program are still needed to be further improved, some soil data as well as landslide information are lack; TRIGRS is proved to be a powerful tool for shallow landslide susceptibility zonation especially in great areas where the input geotechnical and hydraulic data for simulation is not fully available.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
• /
• v.35 no.10
• /
• pp.17-31
• /
• 2019

This study describes a prediction method for rainfall-induced landslides and subsequently debris flows in a regional scale areas. Special attention is given to the calculation of the propagation of debris flows by considering rainfall infiltration into soil slopes and soil entrainments by debris flows. The proposed method was verified by comparing the analytical results and the measured ones reported by the previous research. As a result, predictions and observations were quite similar in terms of the front position, the velocity, volume and momentum of debris flows. Even when applied to natural mountain slope with complicated terrain, numerical results and observations were similar. At last, the combined analysis of landslides and debris flows were conducted. The landslides prediction showed a predictive rate of about 83%, and the result of the final volume of debris flow showed an error rate of 3%. As a result, the proposed combined method for landslides and debris flows overcomes the problem of separating the landslides analysis and the debris flows simulation. Especially, the proposed method can analyze the effects of rainfall on entrainments by debris flows as well as rainfall-induced landslides and the behavior of debris flows.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
• /
• v.18 no.2
• /
• pp.127-136
• /
• 2008

Geophysical survey for establishing a wide site for the distribution of water content, wetting front infiltration due to the rainfall, and distribution of groundwater level has been performed by using 8round penetration radar (GPR) method, electrical resistivity method, and so on. On the other hand, a narrow area survey was performed to use a permittivity method such as time domain reflectometry, frequency domain reflectometry, and amplitude domain reflectometry methods for estimating volumetric water content, soil density, and concentration of contaminant in surface and subsurface. The permittivity methods establish more corrective physical parameters than different found survey technologies mentioned above. In this study for establishment of infiltration behaviors for wetting front in the unsaturated soil caused by an artificial rainfall, soil physical parameters for volumetric water content, pore water pressure, and pore air pressure were measured by FDR measurement device and pore water pressure meter which are installed in the unsaturated weathered granite soil with different depths. Consequently, the authors were proposed to a new establishment method for analyzing the variations of volumetric water content and wetting front infiltration from the responses of infiltrating pore water in the unsaturated soil.

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

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
• /
• v.25 no.1
• /
• pp.57-66
• /
• 2015

A numerical analysis was performed of the seepage from and stability of a mine waste-dump slope in Imgi, Busan, considering rainfall intensity. The 40-45° slope angle of the waste dump is relatively steep, and the depth of the waste dump down to bedrock is 7-8 m. The groundwater level was 6.6 m below the surface. Various laboratory tests on samples obtained from the waste dump were performed to determine the input data for seepage and stability analyses of the waste-dump slope during rainfall. The results of seepage analysis for various rainfall intensities using the SEEP/W program show that the wetting front moved down with increasing rainfall duration. When the rainfall intensity was > 50 mm/ hour and the duration was > 24 hours, the waste dump became fully saturated because the wetting front reached the groundwater level. The results of slope stability analysis coupled with seepage analysis using the SLOPE/W program show that the safety factor of the slope decreased as the wetting front moved down due to rainfall infiltration. After continuous rainfall for 5-6 hours, the safety factor of the slope suddenly decreased but then recovered and converged. The sudden decrease was induced by an increase in pore-water pressure and a decrease in matric suction down to a certain depth as the wetting front approached the potential sliding surface.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
• /
• v.20 no.8
• /
• pp.159-166
• /
• 2004

In this study, experiments on the SWCC were performed in order to find out the characteristics of unsaturated soil and to analyze the stability of unsaturated weathered slopes with rainfall-induced wetting. Several soil types classified by mixture portion of clay (CH) in the weathered soil (SW) were used in experimental tests. To achieve the SWCC, the filter paper method was used on SW with varying clay contents. A tensiometer test was used for measuring wetting front suction of the soils in a laboratory with varying relative densities. Based on the experimental results, it is shown that the wetting front suction increases as clay contest of mixture soil increases : in particular, the wetting front suction increases sharply as the clay contents increase. It is also found that wetting front suction affects the initial wetting band depth and stability of the slope.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
• /
• v.34 no.4
• /
• pp.5-11
• /
• 2018

In conventional analytical solutions for rainfall-induced soil slope stability, the Green-Ampt (1911) equation for estimating the saturation depth and the Skempton & DeLory (1957) equation for calculating the infinite slope shallow failure were compared with the numerical analysis to confirm the error. In the simple evaluation of the reason of soil slope instability due to rainfall using the conventional equations, there are many errors and, overestimation or underestimation of the calculation results. In this study, the equation consisting of the results obtained from infiltration analysis on unsaturated soil slope is proposed by applying the average range of the strength parameters of the granite weathered soils, and its reliability is verified by comparing with the numerical analysis results. The developed equation can be used easily in various fields for the estimation of slope safety factor by checking the rainfall duration and saturation depth.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
• /
• v.13 no.2
• /
• pp.27-39
• /
• 2012

This research is to propose the reinforcing method and design code for the lateral behaviors of the abutment displacement induced from the rainfall infiltration on high landfill slope. First, to make the proper numerical analysis, in-situ soil (weathered granite soil) was taken, and the variance of strength parameters according to water content variance was examined by undrained direct shear test, furthermore, other soil parameters were calculated from the standard penetration test such as elastic modulus and Poisson's ratio etc,. Those parameters were used to calculate the lateral behavior of abutment by finite element method and the member force of pile in high landfill slope according to rainfall infiltration . From the results, the shoe displacement on abutment was calculated as 8.98cm, which is 3 times bigger than the allowable displacement, 3cm. To reinforce it, several reinforcing methods were selected and analyzed such as reinforced retaining wall, soil surcharge, pile reinforcing (5m enlargement, 3-line arrangement, 5m enlargement and 3-line arrangement). In case of 5m enlarged and 3-line arrangement piles, the lateral behavior of shoe showed lower value(2.26 cm) than allowable displacement.

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

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