Issue |
E3S Web Conf.
Volume 195, 2020
4th European Conference on Unsaturated Soils (E-UNSAT 2020)
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 01029 | |
Number of page(s) | 6 | |
Section | Field Studies and Engineering Applications | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/202019501029 | |
Published online | 16 October 2020 |
Field monitoring of soil-moisture to understand the hydrological response of a road-cut slope
Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience, Durham University, UK.
* Corresponding author: samprada.pradhan@durham.ac.uk
Rainfall and slope-cutting for road construction are two key landslide causative factors in Nepal, but how they interact to cause failures is poorly understood. To improve understanding of the effects of cut slopes during rainfall, geotechnical investigations and field monitoring were conducted in a mountainous district, Sindhupalchowk, located in central Nepal. This paper presents the results of the field-investigations and the measurements of volumetric water content obtained from the sensors installed in the study-site. Field-based evidence suggests that the slope that was cut for road construction during the dry period remained stable due to the presence of soil suction, which imparted additional strength to the soil. At the start of the monsoon, infiltration of rainwater caused saturation of the soil at shallow depth, consequently causing loss of suction and reduction of the soil strength. The presence of the road-cut in the hillslope resulting in steeper slopes then promoted the failure. These observations suggest that the presence of road-cuts in the hillslopes can cause landslides even during non-exceptional rainfall events.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences 2020
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.