Effect of Surcharge on the Stability of Rock Slope under Complex Conditions

In this paper, a general analytical expression for the factor of safety of the rock slope against plane failure is proposed, incorporating most of the practically occurring under complex conditions such as depth of tension crack, depth of water in tension crack, seismic loads and surcharge. Several special cases of this expression are established, which can be found similarly to those reported in the literature. A detailed parametric analysis is presented to study the effect of surcharge on the stability of the rock slope for practical ranges of main parameters such as depth of tension crack, depth of water in tension crack, the horizontal seismic coefficient and the vertical seismic coefficient. The parametric analysis has shown that the factor of safety of the rock slope decreases with increase in surcharge for the range of those parameters in this paper. It is also shown that the horizontal seismic coefficient is the most important factor which effects on the factor of safety in the above four influence factors. The general analytical expression proposed in this paper and the results of the parametric analysis can be used to carry out a quantitative assessment of the stability of the rock slopes by engineers and researchers

Full-Scale Experimental Study on Prefabricated Greening Ecological Retaining Walls

Prefabricated walls are frequently utilized as retaining structures in different applications. A new type of prefabricated greening ecological retaining wall (PGERW) is proposed in this research. Full-scale tests and numerical simulations were conducted to investigate the stress characteristics of the PGERW. To this end, the load–stress relationship, load–displacement relationship, and crack development of the retaining wall columns were carefully evaluated. It was found that when the load acting on the 3 m high column reached the ultimate load-bearing capacity (about 150 kN), an “arc + 7”-shaped crack pattern emerged. A V-shaped crack composed of bolt–chamfer cracks formed when the load applied to a 2.5 m high column reached the ultimate load-bearing capacity (about 335 kN). The design of hollow thin-walled columns can effectively reduce the amount of concrete used and, as a consequence, reduce its carbon emissions, while meeting the design strength requirements of the retaining wall. The PGERW addresses the challenges of improving the extent of greening and drainage performance of traditional prefabricated retaining walls. It has excellent applicability to highway slope construction and therefore can be applied in several contexts