A Block-Based Theoretical Model Suited to Gravitational Sliding

Stefano Tinti, Elisabetta Bortolucci and Cesare Vannini

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 1997, vol. 16, issue 1, 28 pages

Abstract: An original theoretical model has been devised to simulate mass flow over hill slopes due to gravitational sliding. The sliding mass is discretized into a sequence of contiguous blocks which are subjected to gravitational forces, to bottom friction and to surface resistance stresses that are generally negligible for subaerial flows, but are relevant for submarine slides. The blocks interact with each other while sliding down the hill flanks because of internal forces that dissipate mechanical energy and produce a momentum exchange between the individual blocks, yet conserving the total momentum of the mass. Internal forces are expressed in terms of interaction coefficients depending on the instantaneous distance between the block centers of mass, which is a measure of the deformation experienced by the blocks: the functional dependence includes three parameters, namely the interaction intensity ¯λ, the deformability parameter σ and the shape parameter γ, by means of which a wide range of interaction types can be fully accounted for. The time integration is performed numerically by solving the equations for the block velocities and positions at any time ti by means of the block accelerations at the previous time t i-1 , and by subsequently updating the block accelerations, which allows to proceed iteratively to the following times. The model has been tested against laboratory results available from literature and by means of several numerical experiments involving a simplified geometry both for the sliding body and the basal surface, with the purpose of clarifying the influence of the model parameters on the slide dynamics. The model improves the performance of the existing kinematic models for slides, moreover preserving an equivalent numerical simplicity. Future applications and possible improvements of this model are suggested. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1997

Keywords: block model; debris avalanche; multiple-block model; landslide; numerical simulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1997
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1023/A:1007934804464 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:16:y:1997:i:1:p:1-28

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1023/A:1007934804464

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().