ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Earth Sci.
Sec. Earth and Planetary Materials
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances in Structure, Characterization, and Failure Mechanisms of Geomaterials: Theoretical, Experimental, and Numerical ApproachesView all 21 articles
Infiltration and stability analysis of gravelly soil slopes under rainfall with the improved Green-Ampt model
Provisionally accepted
- 1Jiangxi Institute of Nuclear Industry Geological Survey, Nanchang, China
- 2Jiangxi Mineral Resources Guarantee and Service Center, Nanchang, China
- 3Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
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Rainfall infiltration is a key cause of slope instability, especially in complex soil-rock mixture slopes with preferential flow paths. The classic Green-Ampt model, widely used in infiltration studies, has limitations in handling air pressure variations near the surface of such slopes, causing errors. This study proposes an improved Green-Ampt model that incorporates atmospheric pressure boundary conditions and adjusts the permeability parameter for soil-rock mixtures. The refined model can analyze wetting front depth under various conditions, including constant pressure with/without ponding and atmospheric pressure effects. Finite element simulations of slopes with different stone contents show that block content significantly controls preferential flow and saturation patterns in heterogeneous media, influencing slope stability. Comparisons between theoretical predictions and This is a provisional file, not the final typeset article numerical results confirm the model's effectiveness in calculating wetting front variations. This study provides a theoretical method for calculating wetting front depth during infiltration in soil-rock mixture slopes, considering atmospheric pressure variations.
Keywords: Green-Ampt model, Soil-rock mixture slopes, Atmospheric pressure boundary, FEM simulation, Rainfall infiltration
Received: 27 Sep 2025; Accepted: 10 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Xiong, Wu, Chen, Guo and CHENG. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Zihua CHENG, chengzh65@mail2.sysu.edu.cn
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