Three-phase seepage-deformation coupled analysis for railway embankment damaged in 2004 Niigata-ken Chuetsu earthquake

Abstract

In order to damage of embankments in 2004 Niigata-ken Chuetsu earthquake and to investigate the influence of the rainfall to the seismic behaviors of embankments, a series of numerical simulations were performed. In this simulation, the three-phase (soil, water, and air) coupled analysis was adopted for taking into account the behavior of unsaturated soil. It is shown that the quantitative reproduction of the deformation of the embankment could be made by applying the rainfall in seepage analysis before dynamic response analysis and that the influence of the heavy rainfall on the dynamic behavior was not small.