Abstract
In recent years, the embankment failure due to heavy rainfalls has frequently been taking place in Japan. Such embankment failures may often be induced by ground water seepage flow into the embankment, which in turn weakens the embankment itself involved with a complete loss of the soil suction. Accordingly, it is crucially important to avoid seepage flow into the embankment as well as the accumulation of rainfall behind the embankment. In this paper, a countermeasure named "watertight embankment using L-shaped geosynthetic drain" for protecting embankment against heavy rainfalls is proposed. A design method for the proposed technique is also described. A numerical simulation was carried out to examine the efficiency of the L-shaped geosynthetic drain. The numerical technique was evaluated based on the results of a seepage flow model test performed using a decomposed granite soil.
