Application of Well Drainage on Treating Seepage-Induced Reservoir Landslides

In the process of rapid drawdown of reservoir water level, the seepage force in the slide mass is an important factor for the stability reduction and deformation increment of many landslides in the reservoir areas. It is feasible to improve the stability of seepage-induced landslide by employing a drainage well to reduce or eliminate the water head difference that generates the seepage force. In this paper, the Shuping landslide, a typical seepage-induced landslide in the Three Gorges Reservoir area of China, is taken as an example. A series of numerical simulations were carried out to figure out the seepage field, and the Morgenstein–Price method was adopted to calculate the landslide stability. Then the influence of horizontal location of the drainage well, drainage well depth, drainage mode on the landslide treatment effect, and the applicability of drainage well were analyzed. The results show that: (1) landslide stability increases obviously with the well depth in the slide mass, while the increment of landslide stability with the well depth is limited in the slide bed; (2) the sensitivity of the stability improvement with the depth is greater than that with the horizontal positions of the drainage wells in the slide mass; (3) the drainage well is suggested to be operated when the reservoir water falls rather than operates all the time; and (4) the drainage method is most suitable for landslides with low and medium permeability. These results provide deep insights into the treatment of seepage-induced landslides.