Wedge Failure Analyses of the Jointed Rock Slope Influenced by Foliations
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Wedge Failure Analyses of the Jointed Rock Slope Influenced by Foliations Victor Mwango Bowa
. Tedius Kasanda
Received: 13 January 2020 / Accepted: 18 April 2020 Ó Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract The stability of the slope is essentially controlled by the ratio between available shear strength and acting shear stress, expressed as the factor of safety, along the sliding surface. The slope is deemed stable if the computed factor of safety is larger than unitary and unstable if the computed factor of safety is less than unitary. Although the current analytical method for computing the factor of safety of the jointed rock slope subjected to wedge failure mechanisms allows predictions of the stability of the slope, it tends to oversimplify the key geological features that may influence the resulting factor of safety of the slope. The simplified analytical model was applied to determine the factor of safety of the physical jointed rock slope subjected to the wedge failure mechanisms. Furthermore, numerical model that incorporates key geological feature such as joints and foliations on the same physical case was built to simulate the stability of the jointed rock slope subjected to wedge failure mechanisms. The analytical model results indicate that the computed safety factor is above unitary, suggesting a stable slope while the V. M. Bowa (&) Faculty of Engineering, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China e-mail: [email protected] T. Kasanda Chibuluma Mines PLC, P.O. Box 260499, Kalulushi, Zambia e-mail: [email protected]
numerical simulations result of the same physical slope predicted unstable slope. The obtained conservative factor of safety entails unrealistic predictions of the stability of the jointed rock slope subjected to wedge failure mechanisms. A numerical simulation model that incorporates key geological features could provide realistic predictions of the stability of the jointed rock slope subjected to wedge failure mechanisms. Keywords Wedge failure mechanisms Jointed rock slope Analytical method The factor of safety Foliations Discontinuum numerical modelling codes
1 Introduction Once slope failure occurs, it poses a safety and health concern to humans and has also the potential to damage the construction equipment, disrupts business plans for the buildings, bridges, dams, highways, railways and surface mines. In order to mitigate an unexpected failure of the slope, slope stability studies are conducted by the experts in Civil and Mining engineering fields prior to slope creations. Slopes once generated, depicts two or more free surfaces because of its geometry. Circular failure, wedge failure, toppling failure, plane failure, and buckling failure are the known mechanisms in which a slope could fail
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Geotech Geol Eng
as recognized in many geotechnical articles and Books (Shukla et al. 2009; Tang et al. 2016). It is not strange to encounter several of these failure types or different combin
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