Impacts of Rainfall Events and Distribution on Unsaturated Soil Slope Analysis

The time distribution of rainfall is one of the most important considerations for evaluating soil slope stability. In order to study the rainfall-induced slope failure, the rainfall pattern has generally been assumed as uniform rainfall intensity for rainfall duration. However, it should be noted that the time distribution of the design rainfall method has a significant effect on the soil slope instability. The study implemented Mononobe, Huff, and uniform method as three types of time distribution method of the design rainfall to estimate the factor of safety of soil slopes by rainfall duration. As a result, the difference of soil suction and unsaturated hydraulic properties in a soil by rainfall pattern was found through the application of an appropriate time distribution method to numerical simulation for rainfall-induced slope stability.