Stability and Time-Delay Effect of Rainfall-induced Landslide Considering Air Entrapment

Abstract Rainfall-induced landslide is a typical geological disaster in the Three Gorges reservoir area. The air entrapment in the pores of soils has a hindrance to the infiltration of the slope. It is mainly reflected in the hydraulic hysteresis after rainfall and the decrease of the slope anti-sliding force. A method considered the air entrapment of the closed gas in soil particles’ pores is developed to study the time-delay effect and slope stability under the rainfall process. The Green-Ampt infiltration model is used to obtain the explicit analytical solution of the slope infiltration considering air entrapment. Moreover, the relationship between the safety factor, the rainfall duration, and the depth of the wetting front under the three rainfall conditions (qrain=12, 26, 51 mm/h) is discussed. The results show that the air entrapment causes a significant time-delay effect of the landslide, and the hydraulic hysteresis is the strongest under the condition of heavy rainfall (qrain= 51mm/h). The time-delay effect lasts longer than low rainfall and heavy rainfall when the rainfall intensity (qrain= 26 mm/h) is slightly greater than saturated hydraulic conductivity Ks. Parameter analysis shows that when air entrapment is considered, the smaller the slope angle and the effective internal friction angle, the more significant the air entrapment has on the slope stability; the smaller the effective cohesion, the longer the air resistance lasts. Finally, the application of the Bay Area landslide is consistent with the actual state of the landslide.