Research on the Application of MEMS Sensors to Slope Monitoring Treated by Bolts

The landslide can destroy all kinds of constructions, and seriously hinder people's production and life as well as the development of national economy. Bolt is one of the main methods for slope treatment, but it is difficult to monitor its construction quality and anchoring effect directly. With the rise and development of MEMS (Micro-electro mechanical system) technology, MEMS sensors, with the advantages of small size, low cost and high precision, quickly come out from the conventional monitoring methods and provide new possibilities for the monitoring field in geological engineering. In this paper, based on MEMS sensors, a model test was designed to explore the stability of the slope after treatment by bolts. Natural river sands were used to prepare slopes with angle of 45° through the air-plluviation method. In addition, the tests were divided into two groups (with or without bolts). MEMS sensors were set up in the slope to wirelessly and continually capture the acceleration, angular velocity and angle of slope sliding triggered by simulated rainfall in real-time. It was found that: with no treatment, the acceleration and angle in the interior and the bottom of the slope gradually changed during rainfall, while those parameters in the rear and the surface of the slope had no significant change, which indicated that the slope creep mainly occurred in the interior and the bottom of the slope before failure. When landslides occurred, the movement monitoring indexes in the interior and the bottom of the slope suddenly changed, followed by those in the rear and the surface of the slope, which means that when the sandy slope slides, the interior and the bottom of the slope slides first, and then the rear and the surface of the slope surface fail. This is a typical retrogressive landslide. After the slope was treated by bolts, only creep could be observed during long-term rainfall, and the acceleration and angle in the bottom, interior and surface of the slope gradually changed, while almost no change was found in the rear of the slope, which shows that under rainfall conditions, overall creep occurs for the slope after reinforcement, the slope angle decreases, and there is no landside. The experimental results prove that MEMS sensors can realize low-cost, high-precision, continuous real-time monitoring of slope, and can capture gradual changes of movements before failure and the sudden change when landslide occurs. It should play a certain role in the study of landslide mechanism and landslide warning, and has a broad application in the field of geological engineering monitoring.