Parallel numerical analysis of the failure characteristics of earthquake-induced landslides

Abstract

Earthquake-induced landslides are serious natural hazards that shocked us with tremendous casualties and great economic losses in many mountainous areas around the world. However, predicting and preventing the earthquake-induced landslides is very difficult due to the complicated relationship between seismic dynamics and coseismic landsliding. Comprehensive understanding of earthquake-induced landslides from the perspective of seismic dynamic mechanism remains inadequate at present. This study employs an elastoplastic spectral element method incorporating parallel computing and represents a realistic three-dimensional slope model via a semi-structured hexahedral mesh to investigate the dynamic failure characteristics of earthquake-induced landslides. Dynamic behaviours of slopes are simulated using a continuumbased approach with a Mohr-Coulomb yield criterion. Displacement fields are calculated using the shear strength reduction technique. Pseudo-static seismic loading is performed to assess the slope stability quantitatively and complex topography is taken into consideration. The Xinzhong landslide that occurred in Beichuan Country is one of destructively collapsing landslides triggered by the Wenchuan earthquake and is therefore selected as a case study for discussion. Three-dimensional visualization of the calculated results quantitatively demonstrated that the three-dimensional numerical model well reproduced the coseismic landsliding response and its essential dynamic failure pattern, which could not be purely captured by Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) technologies and calculated using simply two-dimensional numerical model. The numerical results also showed that tensile and shear fractures had significant influences on the nature of the failed surface development. In addition, the presence of seismic loading in the slope could cause obvious disturbances for the slope stability. Comparative analysis indicated that the shear surface of the earthquake-induced slope was shorter and the tension crack surface was deeper than that of the normal gravity condition. Moreover, the landslide mainly occurred in the transition from the upper to lower part of the slope, indicating that the slope topography was one of the crucial factors resulting in slope failure. Although the model was constructed without the presence of a pre-existing failure surface, comparative analysis addressed that the failure surface obtained by the numerical simulation was in close agreement with that by the post-failure investigations. The results could provide insight into better understanding of the relationship between landslide and seismic dynamic mechanism. The study has practical significance for the effective prevention and mitigation of earthquake-induced landslide hazards.