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Construction, management and maintenance of embankments used for road and rail infrastructure: implications of weather induced pore water pressures

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Abstract

Understanding the age and construction quality of embankments used for road and rail infrastructure is critical in the effective management and maintenance of our transport networks, worth £billions to the UK economy. This paper presents for the first time results from full-scale, carefully controlled experiments on a unique model embankment conducted over the 4-year period between 2008 and 2011. It combines point location and spatially distributed measurements of pore water pressures and water content with outputs from hydrological modelling to draw conclusions of significance to both ongoing research in this field and to the asset management practices of infrastructure owners. For researchers, the paper highlights the crucial importance of transient permeability and soil water retention behaviour of fill materials in controlling the magnitude and distribution of pore water pressure in response to climate and weather events. For practitioners, the work demonstrates that there are significant differences in pore water pressure behaviour across the embankment, which is influenced by construction-related issues such as compaction level, aspect and presence of a granular capping material. Permeability was also observed to vary across the embankment both spatially and with depth, being dependent on degree of saturation and macroscale effects, particularly within a ‘near surface zone’. It is proposed that this ‘near surface zone’ has a critical effect on embankment stability and should be the focus of both ongoing scientific research and inspection and monitoring as encompassed by asset management regimes.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge funding for the BIONICS project from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (BIONICS GR/S87430/01) and also continued funding from the EPSRC Platform Grant in Earth Systems Engineering (EP/G01343/1), iSMART (EP/K027050/1), the BGS British University Funding Initiative and COST TU1202. They would also like to thank the industrial sponsors to the research including Network Rail, the Highways Agency, Mott Macdonald, London Underground and Geo-Observations Ltd. The input from the other academic partners for the Universities of Dundee, Durham, Loughborough, Nottingham Trent and Bristol are also gratefully acknowledged. The contributions of J.E. Chambers, P.B. Wilkinson and D.A. Gunn are published with the permission of the Executive Director of the British Geological Survey, NERC. Researchers wishing to make use of the raw datasets used in the preparation of this paper are invited to contact the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Newcastle University, Drummond Building, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK

    Stephanie Glendinning, Paul Hughes & Peter Helm

  2. British Geological Survey, Keyworth, UK

    Jonathan Chambers, David Gunn & Paul Wilkinson

  3. The School of Engineering, The University of Newcastle, Newcastle, Australia

    Joao Mendes

  4. ETH Zürich, Department of Earth Sciences, Institute of Geophysics, Zürich, Switzerland

    Sebastien Uhlemann

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  1. Stephanie Glendinning
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  2. Paul Hughes
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Correspondence to Paul Hughes.

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Glendinning, S., Hughes, P., Helm, P. et al. Construction, management and maintenance of embankments used for road and rail infrastructure: implications of weather induced pore water pressures. Acta Geotech. 9, 799–816 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11440-014-0324-1

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