Stochastic Assessment of Landslide Influence Zone by Material Point Method and Generalized Geotechnical Random Field Theory
Publication: International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 22, Issue 4
Abstract
In landslide analysis, reliable prediction of landslide’s influence zone is significantly difficult due to the inherent heterogeneity of soils and their spatially varying geological properties. In this paper, a probabilistic framework is proposed to evaluate the landslide hazard zoning through the prediction of their influence zone considering the effects of heterogeneous soil properties. The material point method is used to simulate the large deformations during landslide failure. The spatial variation in the shear strength parameters of soils at undrained conditions is modeled by random fields, which are discretized by the Cholesky matrix decomposition method to incorporate the effects of the soil spatial heterogeneity on the postfailure deformations. Furthermore, a practical landslide hazard zoning is conducted to quantitively evaluate the level of disaster for facilities or structures located in the vicinity of the slope by using the exceedance probability of influence distance and runout distance. Five categories based on different thresholds of exceedance probability are used to visualize the area potentially affected by the landslide. To demonstrate the capability of the stochastic assessment framework, a benchmark example of the heterogeneous clayey slope is simulated, and the associated hazard zone is predicted and discussed; it presents a practical procedure for improving the landslide influence zone prediction and provides new insights for hazard zoning.
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Acknowledgments
Support for this study was provided by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China (Grant No. G20190023048) and the European Commission’s Research Fund for Coal and Steel (Project No. MINRESCUE, Grant No. 899518).
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International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 22 • Issue 4 • April 2022
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© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Dec 22, 2020
Accepted: Nov 17, 2021
Published online: Jan 27, 2022
Published in print: Apr 1, 2022
Discussion open until: Jun 27, 2022
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