Monitoring the Performance of Unsaturated Soil Slopes

Field monitoring is necessary for the geotechnical engineer to verify design assumptions. More importantly, the field data may also be assembled into a comprehensive case record that is available for use when checking validity of any analytical and numerical models. The ongoing process of back-analysis in unsaturated soil engineering can help to refine and improve our understanding, providing guidance for future designs, where the effects of soil suction and hydraulic hysteresis are still being explored. A range of recent field studies of the mechanisms of rainfall infiltration into slopes is presented. In addition, some physical simulations of unsaturated soil slopes subjected to rainfall, rising ground water table and changes of moisture in centrifuge model tests are reported.