Technical note: The beneficial role of a natural permeable layer in slope stabilization by drainage trenches

Slope stabilization through drainage trenches is a classic approach in geotechnical engineering. Considering the low hydraulic conductivity of the soils in which this measure is usually adopted, a major constraint to the use of trenches is the time required to obtain a significant pore pressure decrease, here called “time lag”. In fact, especially when the slope safety factor is small, the use of drainage trenches may be a risky approach due to the probability that slope deformations will damage the system well before it will become fully operative. However, this paper shows that the presence of persistent permeable natural soil layers can provide a significant benefit by increasing drainage efficiency and reducing time lag. As a matter of fact, any permeable layer that is intercepted by trenches may operate as part of the global hydraulic system, reducing the drainage paths. A simplified approach to designing a drainage system that accounts for the presence of a persistent permeable layer is proposed. This approach, which can exploit solutions available in the literature for parallel drainage trenches, has been validated by numerical analyses.