Vertical acceleration effect on landsides triggered by the Wenchuan earthquake, China

Abstract

The 2008 Wenchuan earthquake with Ms8.0 triggered extensive throwing-pattern landslides in the area within or near the seismic faults. The resultant landslides from this earthquake brought to the fore the effect of vertical earthquake acceleration on landslide occurrence. The pseudostatic analysis and the dynamic response on landslide stability due to the Wenchuan earthquake are studied with the Chengxi (West Town) catastrophic landslide used as a case study. The results show that the epicenter distance is an important factor which affects the vertical acceleration and thus the stability of landslide. Also, the vertical acceleration was found to have a significant impact on the FOS of landslide if the earthquake magnitude is quite large. Within the seismic fault, the amplitude effect of vertical acceleration is very dominant with the FOS of landslide, for vertical acceleration ranging from positive to negative, having a variation of 25 %. The variation of FOS of landslide for vertical acceleration ranging from positive to negative are 15 and 5 % for landslides near seismic fault and outside seismic fault, respectively. For landslide with a slope angle <45°, the FOS of landslide with both horizontal and vertical accelerations is significantly greater than the one without vertical acceleration. Further, the results computed from both the pseudostatic method and dynamic analysis reveal that the FOS during the earthquake varied significantly whether vertical acceleration is considered or not. The results from this study explain why lots of throwing-pattern catastrophic landslides occurred within 10 km of the seismic fault in the Wenchuan earthquake.