Study on the stability of high fill engineering under extreme rainfall conditions

With the rapid development of construction on national infrastructure, such as electric power, water conservancy, airport, transport, the number and size of projects with high fill slope become more and more large. For example, more than 100m high ash dam was constructed to increase the restore capacity of fly ashes considering the space limit. Hence safety of high fill slope was shed more and more attention by the society. Taken a high fly ash dam as the case, this paper take extreme rainfall as controlling factor to study the safety of this case. Two extreme rainfall characteristics was considered, they are short duration high intensity rainfall and long duration rainfall. With numerical simulation, hydraulic response of the slope to the two extreme rainfall characteristics was presented, and the distribution and evaluation of unsaturated zone is discussed. Based on the simulated hydraulic response, temporal and spatial variation of slope stability under extreme rainfall was illustrated. The conclusion of this study is meaningful to the design and reinforcement of similar projects. ©, 2014, China Water Power Press. All right reserved.