• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.1027-1035
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• 2013

In this study, two rainfall patterns are utilized for practical consideration of rainfall phenomena in unsaturated soil slope design. One is the I.D.F (Intensity-Duration-Frequency) method which is an existing design rainfall method and ignores the effect of the variation of the rainfall according to the time. The other is the Huff method which considers this effect oppositely. First, the safety of factor of the slope according to the variation of an initial suction which means the precedent rainfall effect was examined by means of the application of the I.D.F method. Through the application of two rainfall patterns, it was discussed how the rainfall pattern affects the factor of safety of the slope. As a result, it is found that the Huff method is more practical on the evaluation of the slope stability than the I.D.F method.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.5-14
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• 2006

It has been reported that the failure of a slope in weathered soils or rocks induced by intensive rainfall occurs mainly within 2.0m below the ground surface, and that the effect of rainfall on the rise of the ground water level is not significant if the ground water level inside the slope is not so high before rainfall. Most slopes in Korea, however, have been examined to rather fail at the deeper part since they are usually designed on the basis of assumption that the ground water level rises up to the surface when raining. In this study, the rise of ground water level and slope stability were examined in order to verify the appropriateness of the current ground water level condition that has a significant effect on slope stability using the average daily rainfall in Seoul for the last 30 years. The result showed that the ground water level appears to rise up to 6.0~41.0% of the slope height respectively, and therefore the currently applied condition of ground water level may be somewhat overestimated.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.21-28
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• 2021

The factors of landslides depend on rainfall intensity, duration, and the characteristics of the soil slope. The conventional slope stability analysis has been carried out by assuming that the slope is saturated. But, a site slope consisting of unsaturated ground must be imitated and interpreted in order to explain a proper behavior of the slope due to rainfall. In this study, by using two major categories of soils in Korea, such as granite and gneiss weathered soils, landslide model test and numerical analysis have been compared with the difference of seepage and volumetric water content. In general, the permeability of gneiss weathered soil, which contains a lot of fines content, is slower than that of granite weathered soil. As a result, in extreme rainfall, numerical analysis can show results that can penetrate quickly, resulting in saturation or more dangerous collapse.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.47-51
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• 2009

The slope failure in the country is caused by mainly rainfall and its type is reported shallow slope failures in general. To investigate the cause of slope failure, the unsaturated soil slope behavior in accordance with rainfall amount studies actively, but there are little studies related the slope erosion and scour by rainfall. The slope erosion and scour by rainfall cause environmental pollution and slope instability, however there are few methods to effectively control them. This research analyzed experimentally how infinite gradients are infiltrated according to the changes of amount of rainfall and the slope of gradients by manufacturing the model of gradient in order to investigate how rainfall infiltrates regarding homogeneous gradients and slope protection method. For this, this experiment measured and analyzed discharge, storage rate occurring in gradients by going on changing amount of rainfall, slope of gradients.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.53-64
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• 2009

Many slope failures are induced by rainfall infiltration. A lot of recent researches are therefore focused on rainfall-induced slope instability and the rainfall infiltration is recognized as the important triggering factor. The rainfall infiltrates into the soil slope and makes the matric suction lost in the slope and even the positive pore water pressure develops near the surface of the slope. They decrease the resisting shear strength. In Korea, a few public institutions suggested conservative slope design guidelines that assume a fully saturated soil condition. However, this assumption is irrelevant and sometimes soil properties are misused in the slope design method to fulfill the requirement. In this study, a more relevant slope stability evaluation method is suggested to take into account the real rainfall infiltration phenomenon. Unsaturated soil properties such as shear strength, soil-water characteristic curve and permeability for Korean weathered soils were obtained by laboratory tests and also estimated by artificial neural network models. For real-time assessment of slope instability, failure warning criteria of slope based on deterministic and probabilistic analyses were introduced to complement uncertainties of field measurement data. The slope stability evaluation technique can be combined with field measurement data of important factors, such as matric suction and water content, to develop an early warning system for probably unstable slopes due to the rainfall.

• 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.2
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• pp.71-78
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• 2012

Rainfall infiltration test under one dimensional condition is conducted to evaluate the effect of rainfall intensity on seepage velocity and infiltration characteristics for initial unsaturated sediment. Experimental results are compared with those numerical simulations with respect to variations of pore water pressure, degree of saturation and discharge velocity with time, and both results give good agreement. High rainfall intensity tends to increase seepage velocity almost linearly. But it shows rapid increase as rainfall intensity approaches saturated hydraulic conductivity of the sediment. In addition, the upper part of wetting front depth is partially saturated, not fully. Therefore, actual wetting front depth is considered to advance faster than theoretical prediction, which leads to slope instability of unsaturated slope due to surface rainfall.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.20 no.8
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• pp.159-166
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• 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
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.25-34
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• 2017

The soil-water characteristics is the most important state parameter for understanding changes in suction and water contents of unsaturated soil slopes. In the field, the hysteretic behaviors of drying and wetting soil-water characteristic curve are real and the adoption of path-dependent suction-water content is needed to predict the hydro-mechanical analysis of unsaturated soils. In this study, in-situ monitored hydraulic behavior of various soil slopes are compared with the data from numerical analysis with the laboratory soil water characteristic curve. Then, the verifications are performed based on the field monitored data respectively. Therefore, the use of path-dependent soil-water characteristic curves could be more rational for design and analysis of unsaturated soil slopes under rainfall conditions.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.167-174
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• 2023

This study evaluated slope stability through a case study to determine the disaster risks associated with increased deforestation in structures, including schools and apartments, located in urban areas adjacent to slopes. The slope behind the ○○ High School in Gwangju, Korea, collapsed owing to heavy rain in August 2018. Historically, rainwater drained well around the slope during the rainy season. However, during the collapse, a large amount of seepage water flowed out of the slope surface and a shallow failure occurred along the saturated soil layer. To analyze the cause of the collapse, the images of the upper area of the slope, which could not be directly identified, were captured using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). A digital elevation model of the slope was constructed through image analysis, making it possible to calculate the rainfall flow direction and the area, width, and length of logging areas. The change in the instability of the slope over time owing to rainfall lasting ten days before the collapse was analyzed through numerical analysis. Imaging techniques based on the UAV images were found to be effective in analyzing ground disaster risk maps in urban areas. Furthermore, the analysis was found to predict the failure before its actual occurrence.