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Detection of water infiltration and deformation of unsaturated soils by elastic wave velocity

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Abstract

Intense rainfall is the most important landslide trigger. In many mountainous environments of the world, heavy rainfall has caused many landslides and slope failures in a matter of seconds without warning. Therefore, an early warning system can be an effective measure to reduce the damage caused by landslides and slope failures by facilitating the timely evacuation of people from landslide-prone areas. In this study, we propose an idea to correlate soil moisture changes and deformations in slope surface by means of elastic wave propagation in soil. Constant shear stress drained triaxial tests where water was infiltrated from the bottom of specimen until failure, and slope model tests under artificial rainfall were performed to investigate the response of elastic wave velocities during pre-failure phases of rainwater infiltration and deformation. Analysis of the results has established that the elastic wave velocity continuously decreases in response of moisture content and deformation, and there was a distinct surge in the decrease rate of wave velocity when failure was initiated. Possible mechanisms were interpreted based on the test results. It is proposed that a warning be issued at switch of wave velocity decrease rate. This approach can thus serve as the basis of an early warning system for landslides and slope failure considering both moisture content and deformation.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT, Grant No. 131545) for PhD studies of the first author, the International Cooperate Project of the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (2013DFA21720), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41301009).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Yulong Chen

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8656, Japan

    Yulong Chen, Taro Uchimura, Muhammad Irfan & Jiren Xie

  3. Department of Civil Engineering, University of Engineering and Technology Lahore, G.T. Road, Lahore, 54890, Pakistan

    Muhammad Irfan

  4. Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, Sichuan, 610044, China

    Dong Huang

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  1. Yulong Chen
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  2. Taro Uchimura
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  3. Muhammad Irfan
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  4. Dong Huang
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  5. Jiren Xie
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yulong Chen, Muhammad Irfan or Jiren Xie.

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Chen, Y., Uchimura, T., Irfan, M. et al. Detection of water infiltration and deformation of unsaturated soils by elastic wave velocity. Landslides 14, 1715–1730 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-017-0825-8

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