Abstract. In several countries, the rising occurrence of sinkholes has led to severe social and economic damage. Based on the mechanism of sinkhole development, researchers have investigated the correlation between rainfall intensity and sinkholes caused by damaged sewer pipes. In this study, the effect of rainfall intensity on the formation of eroded zones, as well as the occurrence of sinkholes caused by soil erosion due to groundwater infiltration through pipe defects, has been analyzed through model tests. The ground materials in Seoul were represented by weathered granite soil, which is generally used for backfill sewer pipes, and groundwater levels corresponding to three different rainfall intensity conditions were considered. The ground level changes and ground displacements were measured continuously, and the particle image velocimetry (PIV) algorithm was applied to measure the displacement at each position of the model ground. The results indicate that impeding the excessive rise in groundwater levels by securing sufficient sewage treatment facilities can effectively prevent the development of sinkholes caused by pipe defects.

In South Korea, weathered granite is widely distributed and has been used as a bearing stratum for various structures. Therefore, it is important to determine the shear strength of the weathered granite. However, it is difficult to obtain reliable shear strength parameters with laboratory tests or standard penetration test (SPT) because weathered granite is easily crushed during the sampling process, and the penetrability of SPT is not secured. On the other hand, it is well known that weathering affects the variation of geotechnical properties. Based on this concept, this study reports a correlation between the shear strength parameters and the chemical weathering indices of the weathered granite. In this study, the pressuremeter test (PMT) was adopted to determine the friction angle of the weathered granite. For the identical granite, the chemical weathering indices (Vogt’s Ratio (VR), Chemical Index of Alteration (CIA), and Mobiles Index (Imob)) were measured by X-ray fluorescence (XRF). An estimating model considering both site-specific characteristics and degree of weathering was used, and the CIA showed the best correlation (R2 = 0.66) with friction angle among the weathering indices. Since the ratio of measured friction angle over the predicted one was distributed in the range from 0.8 to 1.2, it is more reasonable to predict friction angles based on CIA comparing to using the SPT-N value. It can contribute to a better estimation of friction angles of weathered granite.

Abstract. In several countries, the rising occurrence of sinkholes has led to severe social and economic damage. Based on the mechanism of sinkhole development, researchers have investigated the correlation between rainfall intensity and sinkholes caused by damaged sewer pipes. In this study, the effect of rainfall intensity on the formation of eroded zones, as well as the occurrence of sinkholes caused by soil erosion due to groundwater infiltration through pipe defects, has been analyzed through model tests. The ground in Seoul was adopted using weathered granite soil, which is generally used for backfill sewer pipes, and groundwater levels corresponding to three different rainfall intensity conditions were considered. The ground level changes and ground displacements were measured continuously, and the particle image velocimetry (PIV) algorithm was applied to measure the displacement at each position of the model ground. The results indicate that impeding the excessive rise of groundwater levels by securing sufficient sewage treatment facilities can effectively prevent the development of sinkholes caused by pipe defects.