Abstract
A landslide always results from a progressive process of slope deformation. In recent years, an increasing number of slope instabilities have occurred with regard to human engineering activities such as hydropower or traffic construction in mountainous area, which cause even greater casualties and economic loss compared with the natural hazards. The development of such earth surface process may hold long period with mechanisms still not fully understood. Using monitoring technology is an effective and intuitive approach to assist analyzing the slope deformation process and their driving factors. This study presents an engineering slope excavated during the construction of Changheba Hydropower Station, which is located in the upper reaches of Dadu River, Sichuan Province, southwest China. The engineering slope experienced and featured a five-year continuous deformation which caused continuous high risks to the engineering activities. We conducted in-depth analysis for such a long-term deformation process based on ground and subsurface monitoring data, collected successive data with a series of monitoring equipment such as automated total station, borehole inclinometers and other auxiliary apparatus, and identified the deformation process based on the comprehensive analysis of monitoring data as well as field investigation. After analyzing the effects of engineering activities and natural factors on the continuous deformation, we found that the overburden strata provided deformable mass while the excavation-produced steep terrain initiated the slope deformation in limit equilibrium state over a long period of time; afterwards, the intense rainwater accelerated slope deformation in the rainy season.
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Acknowledgements
This work was funded by the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program(STEP) (2019QZKK0904), National Natural Science Foundation of China (42077266, 41825018, 42090051, 41941018, 41902289), Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA23090402).
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Zhang, Ss., Guo, Sf., Qi, Sw. et al. Investigation on long-term progressive deformation of engineering slope based on comprehensive monitoring. J. Mt. Sci. 19, 1576–1587 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-022-7346-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-022-7346-1