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Climate and vegetation impacts on infrastructure cuttings and embankments

Climate and vegetation impacts on infrastructure cuttings and embankments
Climate and vegetation impacts on infrastructure cuttings and embankments
A mature transport infrastructure such as that in the UK is often intensively used, but has key elements that were built without the benefit of a modern understanding of soil mechanics and geotechnical design. Operation of any transport infrastructure network is critically dependent on the performance of such elements, in particular cutting and embankment slopes. In a temperate European climate, seasonal winter wetting and summer drying impose potentially onerous cycles of loading that can precipitate both ultimate and serviceability failures, especially in vegetated slopes. Seasonal shrinkage and swelling of clay fill railway embankments can directly disturb railway track geometry, resulting in train speed restrictions that disrupt normal operations. Very wet winter periods can cause result in slope failures requiring closure of the line for repair and in some cases potentially serious train derailments. As part of an ongoing long-term research programme, observations from field instrumentation are being used to understand how weather and vegetation drive changes in water content and pore water pressure in the earthworks, in turn leading to ground movements. The field observations have also been used to develop and calibrate numerical models able to replicate weather-driven pore water pressure changes and slope failure. The lecture will summarise recent progress, and show how historical and current weather event sequences have been applied using the models developed to understand and assess slope deterioration processes under future climate scenarios up to and including the 2080s.
Earthworks, Vegetation, Climate change
128-144
Springer
Powrie, William
600c3f02-00f8-4486-ae4b-b4fc8ec77c3c
Smethurst, Joel
8f30880b-af07-4cc5-a0fe-a73f3dc30ab5
Zhan, Liangtong
Chen, Yunmin
Bouazza, Abdelmalek
Powrie, William
600c3f02-00f8-4486-ae4b-b4fc8ec77c3c
Smethurst, Joel
8f30880b-af07-4cc5-a0fe-a73f3dc30ab5
Zhan, Liangtong
Chen, Yunmin
Bouazza, Abdelmalek

Powrie, William and Smethurst, Joel (2019) Climate and vegetation impacts on infrastructure cuttings and embankments. Zhan, Liangtong, Chen, Yunmin and Bouazza, Abdelmalek (eds.) In Proceedings of the 8th International Congress on Environmental Geotechnics: Towards a Sustainable Geoenvironment. vol. 1, Springer. pp. 128-144 . (doi:10.1007/978-981-13-2221-1_7).

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

A mature transport infrastructure such as that in the UK is often intensively used, but has key elements that were built without the benefit of a modern understanding of soil mechanics and geotechnical design. Operation of any transport infrastructure network is critically dependent on the performance of such elements, in particular cutting and embankment slopes. In a temperate European climate, seasonal winter wetting and summer drying impose potentially onerous cycles of loading that can precipitate both ultimate and serviceability failures, especially in vegetated slopes. Seasonal shrinkage and swelling of clay fill railway embankments can directly disturb railway track geometry, resulting in train speed restrictions that disrupt normal operations. Very wet winter periods can cause result in slope failures requiring closure of the line for repair and in some cases potentially serious train derailments. As part of an ongoing long-term research programme, observations from field instrumentation are being used to understand how weather and vegetation drive changes in water content and pore water pressure in the earthworks, in turn leading to ground movements. The field observations have also been used to develop and calibrate numerical models able to replicate weather-driven pore water pressure changes and slope failure. The lecture will summarise recent progress, and show how historical and current weather event sequences have been applied using the models developed to understand and assess slope deterioration processes under future climate scenarios up to and including the 2080s.

Text
Powrie & Smethurst (2019) 8ICEG - Accepted Manuscript
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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 8 August 2018
e-pub ahead of print date: 11 October 2018
Published date: January 2019
Keywords: Earthworks, Vegetation, Climate change

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 426228
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/426228
PURE UUID: eb2928f6-8bde-45d9-bb8b-0f2a901b3e6b
ORCID for William Powrie: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-2271-0826

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Date deposited: 20 Nov 2018 17:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 02:47

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Contributors

Author: William Powrie ORCID iD
Author: Joel Smethurst
Editor: Liangtong Zhan
Editor: Yunmin Chen
Editor: Abdelmalek Bouazza

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