Abstract: Reservoir landslide surge can cause great damages. It’s important to forecast the possible harm brought by reservoir landslides surge correctly and it’s one of the most important content of feasibility demonstration for engineering. The shallow water control equation is applied to finite element numerical simulation for waves generated by landslides. The governing equation is discretized by the two-step Taylor-Galerkin method, which is of high-order accuracy and easy to be carried out. To examine the performance of the numerical model, an example is simulated. The results indicate that the water wave pushes towards the surroundings with the water access point as a source point, companying with continuous attenuation. The decreasing amplitude of the wave height diminishes gradually with the increasing spread distance. And the calculated result agreed well with the measured data, including the primary wave heights and the laws of water level movement; furthermore, the wave propagation process toward upstream and downstream is visualized. The validity and reliability of the method are proved by the result of the study. The research result can be used to forecast and prevent landslide disaster.

Key words: landslide surge, numerical simulation, shallow water control equation, two-step Taylor-Galerkin method, finite element method