The stability of natural slopes is goverened by many factors, one of which is the porewater pressure. In this study, a sensitivity analysis has been conducted in GeostudioSLOPE/W to investigate the impact of near-surface pore water pressure on thefactor of safety i silt slopes. The study includes five slopes along Ångermanälven,Sweden, which previously have been investigated within the framework of a slopefailure risk mapping of the area conducted by the Swedish Geotechnical Institute,SGI. The near-surface pore water pressure in the slopes has not successfullybeen measured in this area as the slopes are very high and steep. Calculations ofslope stability done previously by Tyréns instead assumed 1) that the pore waterpressure is zero 1m in from the slope face and 2) that it decreases hydrostatically(10 kPa/m) towards the slope face, and these are the parameters studied in thesensitivity analysis. When the pore water pressure is set to zero at the surface, thefactor of safety is reduced by an average of 7 %. Setting the pore water pressure tozero 2mfrom the surace increases the safety factor by 3%on average. A lower thanhydrostatic (7 kPa/m) pore pressure gradient increases the safety factor by on average2 %. A higher than hydrostatic pore water gradient decreases the safety factorby 16% on average. The results verifies that an increase in near-surface pore waterpressure gives a lower factor of safety and decrease in near-surface pore waterpressure leads to a higher factor of safety. The slopes are generally more sensitiveto destabilizing changes of the near-surface pore water pressure than of those stabilizing.Other factors such as vegetation, cohesion, dilatancy and erosion are notconsidered in this study but likely have a considerable effect on the stability. Whenmodelling the influence of near-surface pore water pressure and other parameters,it is recommended to use a FEM program.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kth-315390 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Calming, Katia, Öttenius, Myrna |
| Publisher | KTH, Jord- och bergmekanik |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | TRITA-ABE-MBT ; 22486 |
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