Location
Arlington, Virginia
Date
14 Aug 2008, 4:30pm - 6:00pm
Abstract
For an in-depth understanding of the failure mechanism of loose fill slopes and the strengthening effect by soil nails, a comprehensive field study program has been carried out at a specially built slope. The test slope was constructed by end-tipping of completely decomposed granitic soils almost without any compaction. The controlled failure test program was mainly composed of surcharge at the crest, wetting with surcharge, and wetting without surcharge. This paper is aimed at a case study of the coupled hydro-mechanical response of the test slope during the recharge process with surcharge. Through a comprehensive instrumentation system, abundant monitoring data with regards to the complex performance of the loose fill and soil nails were collected. It was found that redistribution of water content within the loose fill was well consistent with the recharge program, and nonlinear deformation developed significantly in the loose fill by the reduction of shear strength due to increased pore pressure and diminished suction when subjected to large wetting loads. Also a two-dimensional simplified finite element model is established and some preliminary simulation results are presented.
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Meeting Name
6th Conference of the International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering
Publisher
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Document Version
Final Version
Rights
© 2008 Missouri University of Science and Technology, All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
File Type
text
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Zhou, Y. D.; Tham, L. G.; Li, J.; To, E. C. Y.; and Lee, C. F., "Controlled Wetting Test of a Soil Nailed Loose Fill Slope: Case Study" (2008). International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering. 18.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/icchge/6icchge/session02/18
Controlled Wetting Test of a Soil Nailed Loose Fill Slope: Case Study
Arlington, Virginia
For an in-depth understanding of the failure mechanism of loose fill slopes and the strengthening effect by soil nails, a comprehensive field study program has been carried out at a specially built slope. The test slope was constructed by end-tipping of completely decomposed granitic soils almost without any compaction. The controlled failure test program was mainly composed of surcharge at the crest, wetting with surcharge, and wetting without surcharge. This paper is aimed at a case study of the coupled hydro-mechanical response of the test slope during the recharge process with surcharge. Through a comprehensive instrumentation system, abundant monitoring data with regards to the complex performance of the loose fill and soil nails were collected. It was found that redistribution of water content within the loose fill was well consistent with the recharge program, and nonlinear deformation developed significantly in the loose fill by the reduction of shear strength due to increased pore pressure and diminished suction when subjected to large wetting loads. Also a two-dimensional simplified finite element model is established and some preliminary simulation results are presented.
