Slopes

Below are two example materials that we used in order to show the difference between a cohesive material and a non cohesive material. The two different materials were graphed and then used the graphs information to derive certain values in order to calculate the angle of friction.

The model results that came from this experiment are ver consistent with the state of the Riverside Avenue landslide prone area. The slide failed due to a large rainfall event that occurred in Burlington during the 2019 Halloween storm. This storm brought around 2.6-3.0 inches of rain to part of Chittenden county. Riverside avenue in Burlington has been historically widened over the years as the need for transportation around the city has increased. As more filling goes on and more trees were cut down it made areas on the stope prone to landslides due to the non existent root cohesion or strong soil cohesion due to the presences of sand as fill. A great example of this is to look West along the slope, seeing the large 80 year old trees, keeping the slope stable. Compared to the slope that failed. (Sand and blocks) In the model that we calculated under a variety of circumstances, the slope will fail.

The ability for the slope to fail is all related to the factors that hold slopes up as-well as the repeatability of landslides on already failed slopes. Deforestation, filling, and paving/hardening of surfaces all leads to more runoff. This runoff geomorphically can change landscapes as we see with the riverside avenue landslide. The pore volumes within the slope became buoyant, more and more water came off riverside avenue, across the hard pack gravel and into the slope. As the slope became saturated, the driving force becomes greater, allowing for the heavy material that was filled to fail along the main scarp. The landslide resulted in lots of trash and shrubs moving down slope and eventually depositing sediment into the Winooski river basin.