Abstract
There are many rock slopes in the intermediate and mountainous area. The rainfall and ambient temperature would cause the gradual degradation of the slope, which would become the trigger of the slope failure. In this paper, the degradation process of rock slope was numerically examined by using the damage model considering the expansive strain due to damage progress. The damage parameters obtained from the rock specimen degraded by freezing and thawing were applied to simulate the behavior of hypothetical rock slope suffering from temporal change in rainfall and ambient temperature. The simulation was carried out by the coupled thermal, hydraulic and mechanical model. Three locations having the typical pattern of rainfall and ambient temperature in Japan were selected. It was found from the results that the degradation was progressed most at the top of slope. The location having the large variation of temperature through one year showed the high progress of degradation of the slope. The effect of rainfall on the degradation of soft rock was larger than that of hard rock. It was recommended to monitor the change in Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio by nondestructive investigation to understand the future progress of the degradation of the slope.
