Stability Analysis Of Unsaturated Soil Slope Due To Infiltration

Permeation of rainwater is often one of the major factors causing the stability failure of expansive soil and residual soil slopes in tropic and subtropic zones. A prediction method of stability taking effect of infiltration and evaporation into consideration for soil slopes is a complex engineering problem demanding prompt solution. On the basis of consideration in the changes of the physical-mechanical behavior of soils due to the permeation of rainfall, this present paper adopts the limit equilibrium method to develop a set of methods that take the effect of rainfall permeation into account to analyze the stability of unsaturated soil slopes. The proposed method has a consideration that the moisture content in a soil slope after permeation exhibits a field distribution and the shear strength of the soil is the function of degree of saturation. The case given by this paper has shown that the stability failure of a soil slope due to permeation is often of shallow failure type and it is applicable to simulate the potential sliding surface as polygonal line.