Investigation of the Impact of Rainfall Patterns on Highway Slope Instability

Highway embankments are one of the most crucial elements of the transportation infrastructure system in the United States. Therefore, keeping the integrity of the highway slopes is of utmost importance for economic sustainability of the country. However, because of the variation of the environmental condition and the presence of unsuitable soil that constitutes many of the highway embankments often pose serious threat to these infrastructures' stability and cause property damages and casualties. Highway embankments constructed with unsuitable soil, especially expansive clayey soil are susceptible to reduction in the shear strength properties, and eventually cause the failure. The southern Texas (greater Houston region) has been experiencing multiple natural disasters and subsequent deterioration of the transportation infrastructures (e.g., pavement distress, slope failure etc.). Among these, the variable rainfall pattern is one of the major causes of slope instability. Additionally, substantial heterogeneities of geological composition have been observed in this region. In the proposed study, the research team aims to study the rainfall characteristics of the southern part of Texas and develop the rainfall pattern for this region. The typical measurement of rainfall is executed by rain gauge network, which is straightforward to estimate the surface precipitation and has significant spatial variation. To achieve greater resolution in rainfall measurement, this proposed research will incorporate the weather radar networks. Furthermore, the team aims to develop a geotechnical database containing information such as sub-soil characteristics (e.g., physical, hydraulic, strength), slope geometrical configuration, and other pertinent information of highway slopes for this region to synthesize the hydro-geotechnical analysis.

• Record URL:
  https://transet.lsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2021/08/21GTPVAMU2.pdf
• Supplemental Notes:
  • 21GTPVAMU2

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $60000
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3551747106

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  Transportation Consortium of South-Central States (Tran-SET)

  Louisiana State University
  Baton Rouge, LA  United States  70803
• Project Managers:

  Mousa, Momen

• Performing Organizations:

  Prairie View A&M University

  Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
  P.O. Box 519
  Prairie View, TX  United States  77446
• Principal Investigators:

  Bin Alam, Md Jobair

• Start Date: 20210801
• Expected Completion Date: 20230201
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Climate; Geotechnical engineering; Radar; Rainfall; Slope stability; Slopes
• Geographic Terms: Texas
• Subject Areas: Geotechnology; Highways; Pavements;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01833050
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Transportation Consortium of South-Central States (Tran-SET)
• Contract Numbers: 69A3551747106
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Jan 20 2022 4:31PM