ABSTRACT
Traditional slope stability analyses incorporate rainfall influences through changing the groundwater flow patterns with increasing pressure heads or a rising groundwater table. However, there is not much evidence of a rise of groundwater table in many shallow failures (Fourie et al., 1999). The failures are mainly attributed to the advance of a wetting front and the reduction of shear strength due to the decrease of matric suction in the unsaturated soils (Fredlund and Rahardjo, 1993; Rahardjo et al., 1995). Hence, such failures would not be properly analyzed using the traditional approaches.
