Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics Applied to the Modelling of Landslides

Abstract:

Landslides are among the most devastating natural hazards because they often initiate rapidly and mobilize very large volumes of material. While the mechanics of landslides is relatively well understood it is still extremely difficult to anticipate any particular event and estimate its potential consequences. Mesh-free methods are ideally suited to handle large deformations associated with slope failure but they often assume the mechanism of failure a priori. In this work we apply Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics to simulate all phases of a landslide within one single numerical platform. A Drücker-Prager model is used to determine the onset of failure. The post-failure behaviour is accommodated naturally by the mesh-free nature of the method. The relevance of the method to the modelling of landslides is demonstrated on several examples of slope failure.

• Periodical: Applied Mechanics and Materials (Volume 553)
• Pages: 519-524
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMM.553.519
• Online since: May 2014
• Authors: Vincent Lemiale*, Laura Karantgis, Philip Broadbrige
• Keywords: Elasto-Plastic Model, Landslide, Slope Failure, Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamic (SPH)

References

[1] D. Petley, Global patterns of loss of life from landslides, Geology (Boulder), 40, no. 10 (2012) 927–930.

DOI: 10.1130/g33217.1

[2] T. W. J. van Asch, J. P. Malet, L. P. H. van Beek, and D. Amitrano, Techniques, issues and advances in numerical modelling of landslide hazard, Bull Soc Geol Fr, 178 (2007) 65–88.

DOI: 10.2113/gssgfbull.178.2.65

[3] V. Lemiale, S. Mead, and P. Cleary, Numerical Modelling of Landslide Events Using a Combination of Continuum and Discrete Methods, presented at the Ninth International Conference on Computational Fluid Dynamics in the Minerals and Process Industries, Melbourne, Australia, (2012).

[4] S. Cuomo, N. Prime, A. Iannone, F. Dufour, L. Cascini, and F. Darve, Large deformation FEMLIP drained analysis of a vertical cut, Acta Geotech., 8, no. 2 (2013) 125–136.

DOI: 10.1007/s11440-012-0179-2

[5] H. H. Bui, R. Fukagawa, K. Sako, and S. Ohno, Lagrangian meshfree particles method (SPH) for large deformation and failure flows of geomaterial using elastic-plastic soil constitutive model, Int J Numer Anal Met, 32 (2008) 1537–1570.

DOI: 10.1002/nag.688

[6] P. W. Randles and L. D. Libersky, Smoothed particle hydrodynamics: Some recent improvements and applications, Comput Method Appl M, 139 (1996) 375–408.

DOI: 10.1016/s0045-7825(96)01090-0

[7] P. W. Cleary, Elastoplastic deformation during projectile-wall collision, Appl Math Model, 34 (2010) 266–283.

DOI: 10.1016/j.apm.2009.04.004

[8] W. Chen and T. Qiu, Numerical Simulations for Large Deformation of Granular Materials Using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics Method, Int. J. Geomech., 12, no. 2 (2011) 127–135.

DOI: 10.1061/(asce)gm.1943-5622.0000149

[9] H. Moriwaki, T. Inokuchi, T. Hattanji, K. Sassa, H. Ochiai, and G. Wang, Failure processes in a full-scale landslide experiment using a rainfall simulator, Landslides, 1 (2004) 277–288.

DOI: 10.1007/s10346-004-0034-0

[10] J. J. Monaghan, Smoothed particle hydrodynamics, Rep Prog Phys, 68 (2005) 1703–1759.

DOI: 10.1088/0034-4885/68/8/r01

[11] H. H. Bui and R. Fukagawa, An improved SPH method for saturated soils and its application to investigate the mechanisms of embankment failure: Case of hydrostatic pore-water pressure, Int. J. Numer. Anal. Meth. Geomech., 37, no. 1 (2013) 31–50.

DOI: 10.1002/nag.1084

[12] P. S. K. Giam and I. B. Donald, Example problems for testing soil slope stability programs, ACADS.

[13] Slide 2D limit equilibrium slope stability for soil and rock slopes - sample problems, Rocscience.

[14] T Koyama, K Irie, K Nagano, S Nishiyama, N Sakai, and Y Ohnishi, DDA simulations for slope failure/collapse experiment caused by torrential rainfall, in Advances in Discontinuous Numerical Methods and Applications in Geomechanics and Geoengineering, CRC Press, 2012, 119–126.

DOI: 10.1201/b11600-15