Analysis of Vegetation Effects on Slope Stability of Embankment

Embankments play a significant role in protecting cities from many natural disasters. Erosion and landslides of embankments and natural slopes are common phenomena occurring every year in Bangladesh. It has become a great concern of protecting embankments and natural slopes from failure. In many cases, traditional methods for protecting embankments and natural slopes are not effective during their designed lives. In such a condition, bio-engineering has been adopted in many countries as an effective and environment friendly measure for the protection of slopes. The role played by vegetation in improving slope stability is now well recognized. Many research works have been done in many countries on many species of trees that are locally available and suitable for the climatic and soil conditions of that country. In this study, an attempt has been made to evaluate the performance of lebbek tree and royal poincianain protecting the Rajshahi City Protection embankment. In-situ direct shear test was performed on block samples to determine the in-situ shear strength of rooted soil and soil without root. A numerical analysis has been performed to compute the factor of safety and shear strength of slope soil with root and without root. Also the effect of different types of vegetation on slope stability is observed by numerical analysis. It has been found that the values of factor of safety vary between 1.781 and 1.926 in case of slope without root whereas the values of factor of safety vary between 1.997 and 2.173 in case of slope with root. In numerical analysis, the shear strength of soil varies between 40.311 kPa to 41.782kPa in case of slope without root whereas in case of slope with root this value varies between 50.929 kPa to 52.13 kPa. The average percentage of increase in shear strength for lebbek tree root is 14.35% whereas this value for royal poinciana is 24.29%. It has been also found thatthe factor of safety of soil slopes without vegetation, with uniform vegetation, cylindrical vegetation and semi-spherical vegetation are 1.605, 1.653, 1.654 and 1.616 respectively. From the results, it is understood that plants with cylindrical root architecture increase the most significantly slope stability. It also appears that lebbek tree and royal poinciana may be low-cost and environment friendly alternative solution for the protection of embankment in Bangladesh.