The influence of shear heating on the development of creeping landslides

Vinayagamoorthy, S. and Zervos, A. (2015) The influence of shear heating on the development of creeping landslides. Lollino, G., Giordan, D., Crosta, G., Corominas, J., Azzam, R., Wasowski, J. and Sciarra, N. (eds.) In Engineering Geology for Society and Territory - Volume 2. Springer. pp. 1491-1494 . (doi:10.1007/978-3-319-09057-3_264).

Abstract

Large-scale landslides may exhibit a creeping phase possibly followed by catastrophic failure. An example of a landslide that exhibited such behaviour was the Vaiont landslide that occurred in Italy, 1963, where the final phase of catastrophic collapse was preceded by several months of creep. Shear heating of the slip plane is a possible mechanism that has been invoked to explain the severity of the final collapse, however its possible effect on the creeping phase has not been fully investigated. In this context we present a model for the creeping movement of a landslide idealized as a rigid mass sliding on a thin clay layer. Heat production and excess pore pressure generation due to frictional heating, as well as their diffusion, are taken into account. The behaviour of the clay is modelled using rate process theory, which is a general theory quantifying time-dependent soil deformation on the basis of micromechanical considerations. As a first step, uniform infinite slopes are considered and the model is used to explore factors that influence the transition from an initial phase of creep to a final catastrophic phase.

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Contributors

Author: A. Zervos

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