Analysis of geological structures for road cut failures: a case study along Balangoda – Haputale main road

Abstract

This study is focused on the causes for the road cut failures and suggest a methodology to design road orientation to minimize cut failures considering geology of the rock present in the area. In the past few years, several road cut failures have been recorded in Sri Lanka and there are development plans to construct expressways in hilly areas of the country. Hence, this study is important to minimize and control road cut failures while designing road orientation in a scientific manner. Several of studies were carried out to find the relationship between rock properties of the slope and occurrence of cut failures. This study helps to create a forecasting model for different scenarios. In this study, in order to validate the outcomes, some software were used. “DipAnalyst 2.0” is one of them and is a slope stability analysis software, which is designed to perform kinematic analysis for rock slopes and also calculating factor of safety values for plane and wedge failures based on the limit equilibrium theory. In this study, we identified that rock of the study area mainly dip towards the road (dip direction is parallel to the road direction). It is the main cause for lot of failures.