Landslide Stabilization

Landslide stabilization can be acheived in a wide variety of ways. Although many landslides occur naturally, most that we have encountered are man made. The potential for a landslide is often from a variety of factors including placing additional surcharge load on a slope, steepening a slope or cutting the toe out of a slope, which essentially steepens the slope. Theoretically, once the driving force (i.e. weight of soil, surcharge) exceeds the resisting force (soil strength, weight of soil on toe), a slide could potentially occur. At the point of failure, the saftey factor (resisting force/driving force) is about 1.0. The resisting force can be increased by placement of anchors or micropiles in the hillside, thus increasing the safety factor to acceptable levels. 

If a landslide is presently occuring or suspected, it is often advantageous to have your geotechnical consultant perform a detained site characterization such as borings taken through the slide material, installation of slope inclinomers to define the rate and location of ground movement and a detailed site survey including the locations of tension cracks, borings, slope inclinometers, etc. 

With this information, your geotechnical contractor can develop a plan to mitigate the movement and stabilize the slope. Anchorage might take the form of patterned ground anchors which are tieback anchors attached to a steel or concrete plate which applies resisting force to the ground surface. Anchorage could also include soil nail walls or tieback walls. Further, micropiles can be installed in the slope and act in shear to increase slope stability. Micropiles are particularily useful if tieback anchors can not be installed in the lower portions of a slide such as may occur if a slide is occuring from shore and extending out into a body of water. 

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