Stability Analysis of Kattipara and Meppady Regions of Hill Soil Slope

Kerala has been witnessing a large number of slope failure issues nowadays. After 2018 and 2019 floods, due to the landslide activities occurred in Kerala hill regions, people are getting aware of the seriousness of the slope instability problems. Factors such as geomorphology, slope angle, terrain curvature, slope length and steepness, soil type and land use or land cover are considered to affecting slope stability. The present study concentrates on the stability of Kattipara and Meppady regions of hill soil slopes. 2018 Karincholamala landslide comes under Kattippara region, and 2019 Puthumala landslide occurred at Meppadi region. The study area faces several slope failure issues. Rainfall is the primary triggering factor of slope failures in the region. Human-made activities of deforestation, constructing high rise buildings at slopes and mining explorations take part in making slopes more vulnerable to failure. Disturbances of soil due to vehicle motions, quarrying, construction activities, and earthquakes can affect the dynamic stability of slopes. Before performing the stability analysis under static and dynamic loading conditions, strength properties of soils collected from those regions are determined after conducting the experiments. SLOPE/W software using Limit equilibrium and pseudo static methods are used to obtain the factor of safety of slopes. Results are indicating that the soil slopes are about to fail under static as well as pseudo static conditions if the soils along the slopes are submerged below the piezometric line.