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A landslide occurred on November 24, 2019, in weathered phyllite at the western longwall of Yabaling open pit of Anqian iron mine in Anshan City, Liaoning Province, China. The landslide was estimated to be 3.0 × 104 m3 in volume and caused severe damage to the road of transporting waste materials. This landslide was a typical jointed rock mass landslide, and the cause of the landslide was related to four factors: open-pit mining activity, the weak rock, discontinuities, and the high rainfall. According to the failure characteristics, the landslide area was divided into three parts: the tension-cracking area, the sliding-deformation area, and the colluvium area. The failure mechanism of the landslide was investigated through a back analysis combining nonlinear Hoek–Brown criterion and FLAC3D program with a parameter reduction technique. The results showed that the predicted sliding surface at the critical state matched closely the field observations. A remedial scheme of landslide stabilization including four rows of micropiles was proposed and the stabilization mechanism of the micropiles was discussed. The shear strain increment contours show that the micropiles arrested the original sliding surface and controlled the movement of the sliding mass behind them, and thereby significantly improved the stability of the landslide. This paper also presents the results obtained from the parametric analysis in order to understand the impact of strength parameters on the long-term stability of the stabilized slope. The findings improved understanding of the failure characteristics and mechanism of jointed rock mass landslides may be used for evaluating the stability of slopes and early identification for both active and inactive open-pit mines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A methodology was proposed for the design of micropiles to increase earth slopes stability. An analytic model based on beam-column equation and an existing P- y curve method was set up and used to find the shear capacity of the micropile. Then, a step-by-step design procedure for stabilization of earth slope with micropiles was introduced, involving six main steps: 1) Choosing a location for the micropiles within the existing slope; 2) Selecting micropile cross section; 3) Estimating length of micropile; 4) Evaluating shear capacity of micropiles; 5) Calculating spacing required to provide force to stabilize the slope; 6) Designing the concrete cap beam. The application of the method to an embankment landslide in Qinghai Province was described in detail. In the final design, three rows of micropiles were adopted as a group and a total of 126 micropiles with 0.23 m in diameter were used. The micropile length ranged between 15 and 18 m, with the spacing 1.5 m at in-row direction. The monitoring data indicate that slope movement has been effectively controlled as a result of the slope stabilization measure, which verifies the reasonability of the design method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]