EUROCK 2006 – Multiphysics Coupling and Long Term Behaviour in Rock Mechanics –

Van Cotthem, Charlier, Thimus & Tshibangu (eds)

© 2006 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 0 415 41001 0

Stress-released slope movement induced by excavation in fault zone

Z.Y. Yang
Department of Civil Engineering, Tamkang University, Taipei, Taiwan

J.Q. Hsiao
Hsiao-Jong-Quan Geotechnical Consultant, Tauyuan, Taiwan

H.M. Chen
Kung-Sing Engineering Corporation, Taipei, Taiwan

ABSTRACT: A 5 m shallow excavation in Hsinchuang fault zone in Taiwan causes a serious slope movement.
Numerous tensile cracks indicating slope instability appear at the upper ground surface to 80 m far away from
the open cut. A trial excavation in 3 m depth is carried out in field to investigate the lateral displacement behavior
of the high-stressed material in fault zone. To monitor the free displacement of the cut, no support is applied and
an inclinometer is pre-installed close to the wall of excavation. After excavating, a surface tension-crack opening
5 cm in width is rapidly developed in 2 hours. Finally, the squeezing wall of excavation failed in toppling by the
tension crack. This field observation indicates that the faulted material is in a highly stressed condition and is
quickly squeezing by the released stress.

1 INTRODUCTION

A shallow excavation with 5 m depth of dormitory

building in Hsinchuang fault zone for MRT main-
tenance in northern Taiwan causes a rapidly lateral
slope movement. Building near the excavation was
tilted and several tensile cracks extended far from
the ground surface of upper slope of dormitory cut.
The range of surface cracking progressively reaches Figure 1. Section of soil formation of the dormitory and
to 80 m far away from the cut in five days. It reveals an retaining wall in the slope.
instability phenomena or rapid landslip in this slope.
However, this angle of this slope in landscape (see
Figs. 1–3) is smaller than 6◦ . This is very safe in slope
stability. According to the experimental data and sup-
port design, the excavation and support system actually
are on the safe side. In the other hand, the field dis-
placement measurements of inclinometers show that
the possible slip surface of landslip in this slope is
not a circular, but limited within a certain distance.
This implies that the slip surface could be cut off by a
vertical tension crack in a certain distance.
This study is aimed to explore the failure mech-
anism of this slope movement in fault zone due to
excavation. A trial cut (10 m × 4 m in area) of vertical
opening with 3 m depth, no applied support, is per-
formed beside by the dormitory in the field. In order
to observe and measure the wall lateral displacement
by pre-setup inclinometer close to the face of cut in Figure 2. Front view of the gentle landscape and dormitory
50 cm. site.

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 0.5
fault breccias

0.4

Axial stress (Kg/cm2)

0.3

Figure 3. Location of dormitory excavation related to 0.2

retaining wall.
0.1

water content : 32.5%

0
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08
Axial strain

Figure 5. Stress-strain behavior of fault breccias and the

sheared fracture plane.

24
inclinometer (at 1 m depth)
Lateral Displacement (mm)

16

0
2nd Excavating

-8 1st Excavating & Backfill

Figure 4. Topography of the MRT plan and the fault zone
distribution.
2 GEOLOGICAL CONDITION
This location of MRT dormitory buildings is close to
a reversal fault -Hsinchuang fault (see Fig. 4). Actu-
ally, the formation material of ground within cut is the
fault breccias (with mudstone, shale and sandstone)
in faulted zone which is highly stressed. As shown in
figure 3, the stick-slip in the axial stress- strain curve
of mudstone (see Fig. 5) indicates the inhomogeneity
of fault breccias. The coarse grain of fault breccias also
appears in the sheared surface of mudstone under axial
compression. The grain shape of these fault breccias
is sub-rounded and the maximum size is about 2.6 cm.
The properties of the mudstone are: residual cohe-
sion (C) = 0.4 kg/cm2 , the residual friction angle =
25◦ (from the direct shear test), unit weight = 23 kN/m3 ,
and moisture content = 8%.
The amount of free swelling for mudstone in water
content of 15% is up to 3∼12%. The swelling poten-
tial of the mudstone impacting on slope stability is the
most concern in previous design suggestion for this
MRT excavation project. However, the mudstone sam-
ple (with fault breccias) contains 84% finer of clay.
From, the experimental result, it shows that the per-
meability of groundwater in this ground formation is
very small and the seepage of groundwater is very
slow. Thus, the swelling could not be the possible for
this rapid slope movement.
-16
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400
(2004 /1/ 1) Time (day) (2005 /1/7)
Figure 6. Measurement of lateral displacement by incli-
nometer (at 1 m depth).
3 MEASUREMENT OF SLOPE MOVEMENT
Before the excavation of dormitory building, a retain-
ing wall system of concrete grid-beam with bolts 6 m in
long (see Figs. 2–3) was constructed in the upper slope
to stabilize the surface deposit. Several inclinome-
ters were setup to monitor the slope stability during
the dormitory excavation. The excavation of dormitory
located near 20 m to the toe of retaining wall. In design
stage, the excavation method is to be cut in 45◦ slope,
because of the high safety in the gentle landscape.
In March 2004, during the excavating of dormitory
(named 1st excavation), a remarkable displacement
was monitored by the inclinometers (see Figure 6). An
urgent backfill into the excavation space in the field is
determined and stop this excavating. Moreover, to
guarantee the safe in successive excavating of dor-
mitory building, a series of PIP piles in 10 m long
were driving near the toe of retaining wall (Hsiao et al.
2005).
After four months, for a second time the excavation
(2nd excavation) is opening deep to 5 m. However,
a violent displacement as shown in Figure 6 as well
appears in the measurement of inclinometer. The total

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Figure 7. Monitoring inclinometer is pre-setup close to the
trial vertical open cut.

lateral displacement at 1 m depth is about 16 mm in a

short period. During this period, no remarkable pre-
cipitation of rainfall and excavating work take place
near this site. In addition, at the upper ground surface,
numerous tensile cracks reach to 80 m far away from
the open cut. The abnormal influence distance by this
excavation in fault zone is 16 times of the excavating
depth.
The existence of such tensile cracks indicates that in
a certain zone of the potential sliding mass the tension
force has exceeded the tension strength of the slope
medium (Zhang & Chowdhury 1989). This means that
the retaining wall and driving piles are insufficient to
stabilize the slope movement. The mechanism of slope
movement in this gentle slope is ambiguous and thus
a trial excavation is determined.

4 TRIAL EXCAVATION

A trial cut of vertical opening with 3 m depth (10 m ×

4 m area in size) is carried out beside the dormitory in
the field. In order to monitor the real lateral displace-
ment close to the wall of excavation, an inclinometer
is set up very close to the cut face in 50 cm (see Fig. 7).
For measuring the free displacement behavior, no sup-
port is applied to this trial excavation. Four sensors
are setup at depth of 1.5, 2.5, 5 and 10 m to record the
lateral displacement. Each lateral displacement data
in the inclinometer is automatically recorded in each
5 minutes.
As shown in Figures 7 and 8, a curve tension-crack
in 5 cm width at the ground surface (see Fig. 9) is
rapidly developed in 2 hours after excavating. The
tension crack gradually vertically extended to deep
and became wider. A rock block (in 1 m thickness)
within this tension zone is squeezing outward step by
Figure 8. The failure procedure of tension-crack and top-
step. Finally, this rock block is toppling failure in five
pling failure in 2 hours after excavating.
minutes. The vertical surfaces of this tension cracks

673
Figure 9. Lateral displacement rate at different depth of
faulted material by stress released.
in sidewall are very rough shown in Figure 8(c). This
demonstrates the mechanism of cracking is fractured
in tension. The lateral movement of excavation wall is
mainly contributed by the tension-crack opening and
wall squeezing.
Figure 9 shows the rate of lateral displacement at
different depth. It is found that the lateral displace-
ment is mobilized from 10 minutes after complete
cutting. Then, the extension rate of tension cracking
is kept constant. Finally, the rate decreases due to the
separation of this rock block where the inclinometer
is setup. The rate of displacement at 1.5 m depth is
faster than that at 2.5 m depth. The rate of tensile-crack
opening is about 17.5 mm per hour (i.e. 0.3 mm/min) at
the top surface for this fault zone. In the other hand, the
rate of tension crack opening at 2.5 m depth is 4.2 mm
per hour (i.e. 0.07 mm/min). Therefore, the cracking
rate is about 4 times per meter in depth direction. The
tension crack rapidly propagates to 1 m in depth within
10 minutes.
5 DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
5.1 Creep or squeezing
The time-dependent behavior of lateral displacement
of fault material actually is linear during excavating.
This time-dependent displacement behavior is very
different to the typical creep behavior which has the
primary, secondary and tertiary creep stages. It is also
different to the S-shaped swelling behavior due to
ingress of moisture of mudstone. The displacement
behavior of fault material in this faulted zone is mainly
dominated by the high-stressed or over-consolidated
situation.
Barla (1995) defined that squeezing is synonymous
of overstressing. Squeezing implies rock mass failure
associated with volumetric expansion due to over-
stressing. The reasons of squeezing in this study are:
(a) excessive faulted pressure; (b) the dissipation of
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Figure 10. A safe excavation in normally-consolidated
clayey soils in Hsinchu of northern Taiwan.
residual stress. The observation of this research indi-
cates that the faulted material in this MRT mainte-
nance site displays the property of a squeezing ground.
5.2 Critical tension crack
A normally-consolidated formation of cohesive soil in
northern Taiwan being excavated deep into about 3 m
is shown in Figure 10. This figure demonstrates that
the excavation is very safe. Actually, the excavation
is smaller than its critical excavation depth in a cohe-
sive soil. Therefore, the critical depth of excavation
to form a tension crack in this trial excavation is more
than 3 m. However, a visible tension crack and remark-
able displacement appeared rapidly. The result shows
that the slope movement is primarily caused by pro-
gressively stress releasing. The displacement rate of
faulted material is much faster as we know.
As a result of stress-released, additional earth pres-
sure released from the in-situ stress will applied to
the man-made supporting system. To ensure the safe
of excavating within fault zones, this additional
earth pressure must be taken into consideration. The
approach of small-region excavating in turns to reduce
the rate of released-stress is preferential. In practice, a
quick supporting scheme or pre-cast retaining system
is suggested. However, the quantity of released stress
or displacement rate needs greater study.
REFERENCES
Barla, G. 1995. Squeezing rocks in tunnels. ISRM News
Journals, 3/4: 44–49.
Hsiao, J.Q.,Yang, Z.Y., Chu, C.C. & Chen, H.M. 2005. Lateral
slope flow induced swelling in fault gouge excavation.
11th Conference on current researches in Geotechnical
Engineering in Taiwan, paper No: 06.
Zhang, S. & Chowdhury, R.N. 1989. Identification of critical
slope failure surfaces with critical tension cracks. Rock
Mechanics as a Guide for Efficient Utilization of Natural
Resources. Rotterdam: Balkema.