Movement of Landslide Triggered by Bedrock Exfiltration with Nonuniform Pore Pressure Distribution

Abstract:

Landslides are common phenomena of sediment movement in mountain areas and usually pose severe risks to people and infrastructure around those areas. The occurrence of landslides is influenced by groundwater dynamics and bedrock characteristics as well as by rainfall and soil-mass properties. The bedrock may drain or contribute to groundwater in the overlying soil mass, depending on the hydraulic conductivity, degree of fracturing, saturation, and hydraulic head. Our study here is based on the model proposed by Iverson (2005). The model describes the relation between landslide displacement and the shear-zone dilation/contraction of pore water pressure. To study landslide initiation and movement, a block soil mass sliding down an inclined beck-rock plane is governed by Newton’s equation of motion, while both the bedrock exfiltration and excess pore pressure induced by dilatation or contraction of basal shear zone are described by diffusion equations. The Chebyshev collocation method was used to transform the governing equations to a system of first-order ordinary differential equations, without the need of iteration. Then a fourth-order Runge-Kutta scheme was used to solve these ordinary differential equations. The effects of nonuniform bedrock exfiltration pressure distributions, such as the delayed peak, central peak, and advanced peak distributions, on the time of landslide initiation and the speed of landslide movement were compared and discussed.