GEOTECHNICAL STUDIES FOR STABILITY OF KHANERA LANDSLIDE NEAR YAMUNOTRI

Abstract

During the peak monsoon period of year 2001, a landslide known as "Khanera Landslide" occurred along Delhi — Yamunotri highway on the left bank of river Yamuna. The landslides started in the region during the late '70s and early '80s and has assumed an alarming dimension during the past few years. The present work aims at developing a general computer program for determining the factor of safety of the slopes having two sets of discontinuities and then performing the analysis of the Khanera landslide using the program developed. The program is developed for a general slope face profile. The program, in its present form, has been developed for four different shear strength criteria : - Hoek and Brown (1980), GSI (Hoek and Brown, 1994), IITD (Ramamurthy, 1994) and Parabolic criterion (Singh, 2003). The khanera landslide is taken as a case study and the program is used as a tool for performing the back analysis of the slide to find out the condition of the rock mass and fix the material parameters for the rock mass. The aim is to study the effects of change in the site conditions such as material constants, depth of the tension crack, degree of saturation on the factor of safety of the slope. Parametric analysis is done for the initial slope profile using two criteria viz. Hoek and Brown (1980) and Parabolic criterion (Singh, 2003).