Abstract
A full-scale landslide-triggering experiment was conducted on a natural sandy slope subjected to an artificial rainfall event, which resulted in mobilisation of 130 m3 of soil mass. Novel slope deformation sensors (SDSs) were applied to monitor the subsurface pre-failure movements and the precursors of the artificially triggered landslide. These fully automated sensors are more flexible than the conventional inclinometers by several orders of magnitude and therefore are able to detect fine movements (< 1 mm) of the soil mass reliably. Data from high-frequency measurements of the external bending work, indicating the transmitted energy from the surrounding soil to these sensors, pore water pressure at various depths, horizontal soil pressure and advanced surface monitoring techniques, contributed to an integrated analysis of the processes that led to triggering of the landslide. Precursors of movements were detected before the failure using the horizontal earth pressure measurements, as well as surface and subsurface movement records. The measurements showed accelerating increases of the horizontal earth pressure in the compression zone of the unstable area and external bending work applied to the slope deformation sensors. These data are compared to the pore water pressure and volumetric water content changes leading to failure.
Highlights
Shallow, fast-moving landslides triggered by rainfall cause significant damage to infrastructure and affect many lives all over the world, in mountainous regions
Frequent and accurate measurements of displacement should be combined with the rain, pore pressure and horizontal soil pressure data to increase the reliability of predictions
A landslide of ~ 130 m3 in volume was triggered after 15 h of rainfall
Summary
Fast-moving landslides triggered by rainfall cause significant damage to infrastructure and affect many lives all over the world, in mountainous regions. Features of the pre-failure movements of a natural slope subjected to heavy rainfall events are presented in this paper, and the results of the changes in bending strains along the SDSs are analysed to calculate the subsurface deformation profiles. These measurements are compared to the results of the surface movements recorded and computed using the photogrammetric method. The sensor has been tested to measure negative pore pressures reliably up to 8 kPa. Landslide-triggering experiments Artificial rainfall was applied to the selected slope over a period of 4.5 days in October 2008, with an average intensity of 15 mm/h for the first 2.5 days and 30 mm/h for the last 2 days.
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