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Progressive Failure Analysis of Slope Water Damage Based on Improved Green-Ampt Infiltration Model

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Abstract

In order to get the law of rainwater infiltration and the law of progressive water damage, the slope of Tianshang bridge foundation in Yunnan Province of China is taken as the engineering basis. The site investigation of the damaged slope is carried out. The traditional Green-Ampt model is improved by considering the ponding effect of dynamic water flow on the slope surface. Based on the variation characteristics of wetting front obtained by the improved infiltration model, the progressive failure process of slope with continuous infiltration is simulated by FLAC3D software. The results show that the water damage of Tianshang bridge slope is mainly caused by the slope absorbing a lot of rainwater in a short time, which has obvious time discontinuity characteristics in time, and shows obvious multi-layer progressive failure characteristics in failure space. The wetting front characteristics obtained by the improved Green-Ampt infiltration model are more consistent with the engineering practice. The water accumulation effect of surface water gradually weakens with the increase of the wet front depth. The slope failure develops gradually from the toe to the top and from shallow to deep. The intermittent failure characteristics provide surplus time for the engineering treatment, the gravel soil slope should be treated after a small-scale water damage occurs.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks for the technical support provided by the School of Civil Engineering and the State Key Laboratory of Chongqing Jiaotong University, and thank China Overseas Construction Co., Ltd. for their assistance in obtaining the engineering materials of the Tianshang Bridge in Yunnan.

Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China (41472262); Innovative research group of Chongqing University (cxqt19021); Key project of Chongqing Natural Science Foundation (cstc2020jcyj-zdxmx0012); The first batch of Chongqing outstanding talents innovation and leading talent project (cqyc201903026).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil Engineering, Chongqing Jiaotong University, Chongqing, 400074, China

    Bin Chen, Qingyang Ren, Feifei Wang, Beilei Liu & Wenhao Xie

  2. State Key Laboratory of Bridge and Tunnel Engineering, Chongqing Jiaotong University, Chongqing, 400074, China

    Qingyang Ren

  3. China Overseas Construction Limited, Shenzhen, 518053, China

    Renkun Zhang

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  1. Bin Chen
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  2. Qingyang Ren
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  3. Feifei Wang
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  4. Renkun Zhang
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  5. Beilei Liu
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  6. Wenhao Xie
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Contributions

BC completed the improvement of the Green-Ampt model and the writing of the article, QR directed the research content of this article, FW and BL completed part of the data processing work, WX participated in the project site survey work, and Renkun Zhang obtained the site data Provided help.

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Correspondence to Bin Chen.

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Chen, B., Ren, Q., Wang, F. et al. Progressive Failure Analysis of Slope Water Damage Based on Improved Green-Ampt Infiltration Model. Geotech Geol Eng 39, 5109–5118 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10706-021-01816-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10706-021-01816-w

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