Assessment of the Effects of Climate Change on Slope Stability Using Local Factor of Safety

Farsheed Bagheri, Ali Ghassemi, Rashid Bashir

Dans les comptes rendus d’articles de la conférence: GeoSt. John's 2019: 72nd Canadian Geotechnical Conference

Session: Unsaturated soil

ABSTRACT: Climate change is expected to continue over this century with significant effect on climate variables such as precipitation. Consequent changes in water content within earth structures such as infrastructure embankments, can trigger local, shallow or global failures in currently stable slopes. The widely used limit equilibrium method (LEM) for slope stability assessment is not normally effective for capturing shallow failure modes. In this paper, the effect of climate change on the stability of embankments was quantified by estimating a field of Local Factor of Safety (LFS). For estimation of LFS, a coupled hydro-mechanical model equipped with soil-atmosphere boundary was applied. The effect of moisture content variation on the effective stress was taken into account using suction stress state. For the case study, the effects of climate change on the stability of a typical highway embankment in Ottawa, Ontario were quantified. The results indicate that not only larger mass of embankment will be influenced by local failures in next decades, but also the likelihood of substantial shallow failures increases. Contrary to LEM, the LFS method can trace future evolution of potential shallow failures.

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