TITLE:
Geotechnical Investigation of Slopes along the National Highway (NH-1D) from Kargil to Leh, Jammu and Kashmir (India)
AUTHORS:
Gulzar Hussain, Yudhbir Singh, Ghulam Mohd Bhat
KEYWORDS:
National Highway (NH-1D), Kargil, Leh, RMR, SMR, Kinematic Analysis, Slope Stability
JOURNAL NAME:
Geomaterials,
Vol.5 No.2,
March
2,
2015
ABSTRACT: The national highways are
always considered as the economic backbone of the country and have often
assisted development work all along their routes. The National Highway (NH-1D)
is the most strategic and the only all weather surface link between the two
districts of Ladakh region (Kargil and Leh). The area under investigation
experiences high vehicular traffic, particularly between March and August, as
in the remaining months the Kargil and Leh districtsremain cutofffrom each other due to bad weather. In
recent years, frequent occurrences of slope failures along the highway
primarily affect the smooth functioning of the traffic movement which severely
affects the life of the people of the area. Strategically, this road network is
very important and plays a significant role in transportation and other
activities. In order to ensure the stability of road network in the area, it
becomes extremely important to understand the triggering mechanism of these
failures. The present study made an attempt in this direction and the Slope
Mass Rating (SMR) method has been used for slope stability analysis at
different locations. The stability of the slopes was also assessed using
kinematic analysis conjointly with SMR to identify the types of failure and its
potential failure directions associated with each slope. The result obtained
after calculating RMR from the selected facets ranges from 11 to 89 with lower
values indicating presence of potentially unstable areas. Results have shown
that in a total of 20 facets, 65.28% belong to wedge failure, 22.26%belong to toppling failure and 12.45%
belong to plane failure.