Stability analysis of unsaturated soil slope during rainfall infiltration using coupled liquid-gas-solid three-phase model

Generally, most soil slope failures are induced by rainfall infiltration, a process that involves interactions between the liquid phase, gas phase,and solid skeleton in an unsaturated soil slope. In this study, a loosely coupled liquid-gas-solid three-phase model, linking two numerical codes,TOUGH2/EOS3, which is used for water-air two-phase flow analysis, and FLAC^(3D), which is used for mechanical analysis, was established. The model was validated through a documented water drainage experiment over a sandy column and a comparison of the results with measured data and simulated results from other researchers. The proposed model was used to investigate the features of water-air two-phase flow and stress fields in an unsaturated soil slope during rainfall infiltration. The slope stability analysis was then performed based on the simulated water-air two-phase seepage and stress fields on a given slip surface. The results show that the safety factor for the given slip surface decreases first, then increases, and later decreases until the rainfall stops. Subsequently, a sudden rise occurs. After that, the safety factor decreases continually and reaches its lowest value, and then increases slowly to a steady value. The lowest value does not occur when the rainfall stops, indicating a delayed effect of the safety factor. The variations of the safety factor for the given slip surface are therefore caused by a combination of pore-air pressure, matric suction, normal stress, and net normal stress.

Simulation analysis theory and experimental verification of air-cushion isolation control of high concrete dams

To focus on the key scientific problem of process control of dynamic catastrophe of high dams,presented for the first time are the modelling theory of liquid-gas-solid tri-phase coupling of the air-cushion isolation control of high dams and its numerical simulation method,and theoretical description of the complicated dynamics problem of the tri-phase coupling-thermodynamics state-material-contact bi-nonlinearity,as well as the simulation analysis of the key effects of dynamic catastrophe of the air-cushion isolated high dam engineering.The analytic solution of plane-wave with rigid-dam body was created.The simulation comparison of dynamic catastrophe processes of 305 m Jinping arch dam with and without seismic control was carried out,and the results were basically in agreement with that obtained from the large shaking table tests,and verify each other.The entire air-chamber and optimized air-cushion with varying thickness were presented to develop a optimization method.The large shaking table tests of the isolated dam model,which is satisfied with the basic dynamic similarity relations,were performed for the first time.The test data seemed to be convincing and were in agreement with the dynamic simulation results of the tested model,thereby providing an experimental verification to the simulation theory and method.The combination experiments of theoretical model and physical model demonstrated that the hydrodynamic pressure of high arch dams can be reduced by more than 70% as well as the first and third principle stresses of the dam body reduced by more than 20%-30%,thereby the global anti-seismic capacity of the high dam being improved significantly.The results have shown that the air-cushion isolation is the prior developing direction of structural control technology of high concrete dams.