Journal of The School of Marine Science and Technology,Vol.7 No.2
An experimental study on rock slopes against flexural toppling failure under dynamic loading and some theoretical considerations for its stability assessment
Omer AYDAN and Mehdi AMINI
Abstract
Flexural toppling failure is one of common failure forms of slopes in layered rock mass. The flexural toppling
failure can occur due to bending of layers with or without cross joints. The active flexural toppling failure is well
known and it occurs under mainly gravitational loading with or without water pressure and seismic loading.
However,the passive flexural toppling,which is wrongly named as creep failure by geologists and geomorphologists
as pointed out by Aydan et al.(1988),can also occur when a overload surcharge load resulting from superstructures,
weathered rock or glaciers and seismic load acts. However, the effect of seismic loads is expected to be more
prominent for inducing the passive flexural toppling failure.In this paper,first,a brief review of current studies on
flexural toppling failure is presented.Then,the results of experiments of single column and rock slopes with potential
of flexural toppling failure are explained.Finally,some theoretical considerations on the stability assessment against
flexural toppling failure are presented and discussed.It seems that the existing formulations for stability assessment
may be used with due modifications.