Numerical investigation of the effect of soil properties and rock contents on landslides by DEM

Abstract

Analysis of the landslide has always been a popular research area in geotechnical engineering. When a slope is damaged, the high velocity and strong destruction of a slope failure can cause human injury and economic loss. Three popular methods have been used to analyse slope stability: the limit equilibrium method (LEM), finite element method (FEM) and discrete element method (DEM). DEM is an efficient method of numerical simulation, which can address problems from LEM and FEM and simulate the particle systems with more accurate results. In this work, the DEM was used to analyse the influence of three particle properties on landslides which was ignored in previous studies. The properties considered include friction, soil particle cohesion and rock content. Three experimental investigations were conducted to validate the simulation results. In the DEM simulations, the motion of particles follows Newton’s second law. The Hertz–Mindlin (no-slip) contact model and Hertz–Mindlin with Johnson–Kendall–Roberts (JKR) contact model were considered to reflect the interaction between dry and wet soil particles, respectively. For the effect of frictions, the result shows that variations of the coefficients of restitution, static friction and rolling friction can change the size and shape of the accumulation zone after the landslide. For the effect of soil particle cohesion, it was found that the higher surface energy in the JKR contact model can hinder the movement of soil particles. When surface energy reaches a large enough value, the slope cannot have the obvious phenomenon of the landslide. For the effect of rock content, the increase of rock contents (RC) can make the interaction between soil particles become weak, followed by the stronger interaction between soil and spherical rock particles and between spherical rock particles.

Date of Thesis submission	2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Western Sydney University
Supervisor	Haiping Zhu (Supervisor) & Chin Leo (Supervisor)