Local slope stability analysis

Abstract

Mass movements under the influence of gravity occur as result of diverse disturbing and destabilizing processes, for example of climatic or anthropological origin. The stability of slopes is mainly determined by the geometry of the land-surface and designated slip-horizon. Further contributions are supplied by the pore water pressure, cohesion and friction. All relevant factors have to be integrated in a slope stability model, either by measurements and estimations (like phenomenological laws) or derived from physical equations. As result of stability calculations, it's suitable to introduce an expectation value, the ‘factor-of-safety’, for the slip-risk. Here, we present a model based on coupled physical equations to simulate hardly measurable phenomenons, like lateral forces and fluid flow. For the displacements of the soil-matrix we use a modified poroelasticity-equation with a Biot-coupling (Biot 1941) for the water pressure. Latter is described by a generalized Boussinesq equation for saturated-unsaturated porous media (Blendinger 1998). One aim of the calculations is to improve the knowledge about stability-distributions and their temporal variations. This requires the introduction of a local factor-of-safety which is the main difference to common stability models with global stability estimations. The reduction of immediate danger is still the emergent task of the most slope and landslide investigations, but this model is also useful with respect to understand the governing processes of landform evolution.