Road-cut Slope Stability Assessment along Himalayan National Highway NH-154A, India
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Road-cut Slope Stability Assessment along Himalayan National Highway NH-154A, India Kanwarpreet Singh* and Virender Kumar Civil Engineering Department, National Institute of Technology, Hamirpur – 177 005, India E-mail: [email protected]*; [email protected]
ABSTRACT The Himalayan range, being a complex terrain, is highly prone to slope instability in many parts because of the natural conditions and human interference. In the present study, road cut slope stability assessment has been carried out along Chamba-Bharmour Section (Chamba District, Himachal Pradesh) along Chakki (Pathankot, Punjab) - Bharmour (Chamba, Himachal Pradesh). The cut slopes with the potential of failures have been identified taking into consideration the geological and geotechnical complexities in the selected zone. Rock mass characterization methodologies have been used for the assessment of slope instability . The varying stability classes of the rock slopes have been calculated using rock mass rating (RMR) and modified slope mass rating (SMR) methods. The kinematic analysis approach has been utilized for the identification of different failure modes in heavily jointed, fractured and structurally controlled rock masses. Fourteen potentially unstable slopes were selected to assess their criticality by RMR and modified SMR approaches and their stability classes were identified. INTRODUCTION Road networks play a vital role in improving the development and economy of a country. However, inconvenience along the road network is often witnessed by slope failures due to natural disasters (e.g. landslides, subsidence, toe erosion etc) and human interferences (e.g. road construction and widening and other development activities). This in turn requires quick stability evaluation of slopes and appropriate treatment with a view to reduce risk to life and property. Because of the large numbers of landslide contributory factors, the prediction of the landslide is complex (Aghdam et al. 2017). Some of the natural disasters are interlinked with each other which get initiated by locational elements such as slope, height, drainage pattern etc. Variations in geology, geomorphology, soil, land use land cover (LULC), and hydrologic conditions in the vicinity of an area have been proposed as major landslide triggering factors (Varnes, 1984; Anbalagan, 1992; Hutchinson, 1995; Bhattacharya, 2018). Human intervention, for developmental activities, converts natural slopes into cut slopes which makes them more susceptible to failure (Vishal et al. 2010). Unplanned excavation and blasting for the road construction are also one of the major reasons for creating slope instability. The identification of the unstable slope zones is a critical task for developing such kinds of areas (Ramesh and Anbazhagan, 2015). The whole Himalayan belt, particularly the state of Himachal Pradesh in India, is tectonically active, and monsoon rains in the state initiate floods resulting in the landslides (Kundu et al. 2017). The slope failure, which causes loss of life and prope
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