Slope stability under extreme rainfall conditions

In recent years, many studies have been conducted on unsaturated soils and as a result of these studies, it has been revealed that negative pore water pressure and suction pressure have a significant effect on stability. As water penetrates in the slope, the pore water pressure in the soil increases. This reduces the additional shear strength provided by suction or causes it to disappear completely. In this study, the stability of unsaturated slopes under the effect of rainfall with 3 different soil types was examined. For each soil type, the initial saturation degree in the slope was defined as 0.54, then analyses were performed for a soil type at 0.4 and 0.5 values. A package program working with the finite difference method was used in the analyses. First, the necessary data were loaded into the system to achieve the desired saturation degrees. Then, the selected rainfalls with different intensities and durations were applied to slopes with different mechanical properties and different saturation degrees, respectively. As a result of the analyses, it was understood that the suction pressure had a significant effect on stability.