Experimental Approach to determine the Stability of Embankment Slope using 1-D Shake Table

Abstract

Pakistan lies in earthquake-prone region and earthquakes pay a heavy toll on the economy of the country. It severely harms overall infrastructure, but slopes are greatly affected by earthquake simulations. Being a developing country, Pakistan is recently focusing on the development of road & railway networks across the country and China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is one of its major examples. Embankments constructed to support such a heavy and vast network of roads and railway lines are designed against static loading. But being in an earthquake-prone the region, there is a dire need to analyze the stability of such embankment slopes under dynamic loading as well. For this purpose, a portion of Swat motorway was selected, and its scaled-down (1:11) model was tested using a 1-D shaking table against regular and irregular earthquake loading by changing the direction of earthquake motion, density, and slope angle. It was concluded that the slopes which are statically stable may fail at some critical locations (perpendicular to earthquake motion) when subjected to different dynamic loadings. This paper further discusses how embankment slopes behave at different orientations subjected to earthquake loadings.