Analysis of influential factors on earthquake-induced failure of railway embankments

Abstract

In order to study influential factors, analysis of past relevant information on earthquakeinduced failure of railway embankments was conducted. As a result of computing scores that are empirically assigned to each of the factors, positive correlation with the settlement ratio was obtained. In particular, it was revealed that many of the collapsed embankments were constructed at a site with topography to collect water; they were located at boundaries between different micro-topographies; and they suffered from past damage histories. In addition,detailed case studies were executed on an embankment which exhibited a high value of the above score and suffered from actual extensive collapse, and effects of the strength properties of the fill material and those of the ground water level in the fill were numerically evaluated.