Bio-Inspired Stabilization of Levee Slope on Expansive Yazoo Clay at the Maritime and Multimodal Transportation Infrastructure in Mississippi

The existence of Yazoo clay in Mississippi frequently causes distress in Levee and highway embankment slopes, which are an integral component of maritime and multimodal transportation infrastructure. Each year, fixing the slope failure requires significant maintenance budget of the Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) and the US Army Corps of Engineers. The Vetiver grass, which provides root depth up to 10 ft., has been utilized to repair slope failures in many Asian countries and can be an excellent and cost-effective bio-engineered solution to repair shallow slides on the expansive soil in the US. However, the use of Vetiver as a biotechnical solution to stabilize slides on expansive soil is minimal in the US, due to a lack of understanding of the performance. The current proposal is focused to investigate the effect of the vetiver grassroots to stabilize levee slopes at the maritime and multimodal transportation infrastructures at Mississippi. A levee section in U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) will be selected as a reference test section. Soil samples from the test section and highway embankment in the Jackson area will be collected. A test box will be built in the lab in JSU, where vetiver grass will be grown. Once grown, vetiver grass and vetiver rooted soil samples will be tested in the laboratory to determine the shear strength properties. A 50 ft. wide section at the test section in ERDC facilities will be prepared to grow Vetiver grass. Another 50 ft. the wide section will be selected as a control section. Both sections will be instrumented using moisture sensors to monitor the moisture movement at field conditions. The test section will be monitored periodically to investigate moisture movement, growth of the vetiver grass and evaluate the performance of the reinforced test section. Extensive numerical analysis using the finite element method will be conducted to evaluate the performance of the vetiver reinforced levee slope. Moreover, the performance of the vetiver reinforced levee slope under different intensity and duration of rainfall will be evaluated using numerical analysis. The laboratory test results, field monitoring, and numerical analysis results will be combined to evaluate the performance of the vetiver reinforced slope on Yazoo clay. The study will help to improve the bio-inspired slope repair technique which will help to mitigate the recurring shallow slopes failures in expansive soil which is common in many miles of maritime and multimodal transportation infrastructure such as levees and highway embankment in Mississippi.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $172500
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3551747130

• 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:

  Maritime Transportation Research and Education Center

  University of Arkansas
  Fayetteville, AR  United States  72701
• Performing Organizations:

  Jackson State University, Jackson

  Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
  Jackson, MS  United States  39217-0168
• Principal Investigators:

  Khan, Sadik

• Start Date: 20200315
• Expected Completion Date: 20230930
• Actual Completion Date: 20230930
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Biological materials; Clay soils; Embankments; Finite element method; Grasses; Laboratory tests; Levees; Rainfall; Shear strength; Slope stability
• Geographic Terms: Mississippi
• Subject Areas: Geotechnology; Highways;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01752825
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Maritime Transportation Research and Education Center
• Contract Numbers: 69A3551747130
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Sep 24 2020 2:26PM