| Issue |
E3S Web of Conf.
Volume 382, 2023
8th International Conference on Unsaturated Soils (UNSAT 2023)
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 12007 | |
| Number of page(s) | 6 | |
| Section | Unsaturated Soils of Fills, Levees, Embankments, Dams, Roads & Pavements, Railways and Other Pieces of Infrastructure | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/202338212007 | |
| Published online | 24 April 2023 | |
Unsaturated modelling, testing and monitoring towards the rehabilitation of a slope on National Route 3, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
1 PeraGage, Johannesburg, South Africa
2 Keller Africa, Design Office, South Africa (Previously with PeraGage)
* Corresponding author: mario@peragage.com
The stability of over-steep road embankments often worsens with time. In many cases the slope deterioration can be ascribed to continual downslope creep of a surficial layer of soil that has been affected by infiltration of rainfall. Such infiltration reduces the suction in the surficial layer interacting with the environment. With every season the surficial layer moves further downslope, often resulting in cracks in theslow lane and placing structures constructed at the crest of fill slopes in potential jeopardy. A slope on the National Route 3 (N3), in the South African Province of KwaZulu-Natal, constructed at roughly 40° from the horizontal showed signs of distress in the slow lane many years after construction. The rehabilitation of this slope required stabilisation design using unsaturated soil testing, modelling, and in-situ suction measurement. The slope was stabilised using soil nails, a high-tensile steel mesh, and a suction measurement system was installed. An overview of the emergency works design, subsequent investigation, and monitoring is provided in this paper. It was found that the suction profile determined by transient finiteelement analysis matched well with the measured suction profile and provided a good basis for the emergency design works prior to full investigation.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2023
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.
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