Case Study 4

Geotechnical Design Project Middlehaven Re-development

Group 4

Initial Investigations
X.3. Slope Stability
All sloping ground has the potential to become unstable if the forces in the soil mass exceed the available shear strength in the soil block. This can lead to failure of slopes and it is therefore essential that slope stability is properly considered on the embankment at Middlesbrough. The brief places a limit of 1 in 3 (vertical to horizontal) on the sides of the embankment if no soil reinforcement is present. This has been included to eliminate any localised slope failures that could occur on the slopes of the embankment. It is important however to still check the stability of the slope as it is possible for deep seated circular failures to be present in embankments of this type sited on weak clays. For embankments like Middlesbrough, slope stability is critical in the short term i.e. undrained analysis. This is due to the fact that as the embankment increases in height the will be an increase in vertical stress and therefore an increase in pore water pressure. In the short term this pore water pressure does not have time to dissipate and therefore reduces the stability of the slope. Therefore the following analyses are all carried out as undrained with the embankment material itself assumed to be drained to its granular form. The initial slope stability analysis in Middlesbrough focused on the north embankment. The soil profile was looked at and 2 critical areas were explored. The first critical area was the highest section of the embankment and the second was approximately half way along the embankment where the soil profile peaks bringing a weak clay layer close to the surface. The slope stability analyses were carried out using Oasys Slope software and the results can be found in appendix C. Figure C.XX shows the results of a variety of analyses carried out on these 2 locations. The figures horizontal axis show the factor of safety changing as a common point used in the analyses moves along the top of the embankment. The results from figure C.XX show that location B, the highest point of the embankment is the more critical location with a factor of safety of around 0.31. From here this location was further explored using 2 different approaches, shown in figure C.XX. Both analysis approaches here show that the lowest factor found was 0.3. Using the critical slip circle found from Oasys a hand calculation check was carried out just to verify that Slope was providing correct results. This check can be found in figure C.XX and C.XX. This hand calculated check also gave a critical factor of safety of 0.3 and therefore validated the Slope results. An output from Slope can also be found showing this critical slip circle, seen in figure C.XX. After looking at this output in more detail it was found that this slip circle was critical as it was trying to fail through the weakest clay layer, shown in blue on figure C.XX.

University of Glasgow

School of Engineering

Case Study 4

Geotechnical Design Project Middlehaven Re-development

Group 4

The check for the critical factor of safety on the southern embankment followed from the findings in the northern embankment whereby the critical slip circle would be found at the highest point on the embankment and would be the one lying tangential to the weakest clay stratum in the soil. Figure C.XX shows the results of this search giving a factor of safety of 0.48 lying tangential to the weakest clay layer. With critical factors of safety of 0.30 and 0.48 in the north and south embankments respectively it is drastic that the issue of slope stability is addressed. Ground improvement in the weak strata beneath the embankment will have a beneficial effect to the deep seated failures found here. If vertical sides are included to reduce the embankments footprint further analysis will be required focused around more localised failures.

University of Glasgow

School of Engineering