Numerical Analysis

2D FEM numerical simulation of rainfall infiltration for landslide with considering runoff effect and its application

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  • 1. College of Hydraulic & Environmental Engineering, China Three Gorges University, Yichang, Hubei 443002, China; 2. State Key Laboratory of Geomechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei 430071, China; 3. College of Resources and Environmental Engineering, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430068, China

Received date: 2014-07-14

  Online published: 2018-06-09

Supported by

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) for Youth (41302275).

Abstract

Rainfall is one of the most critical factors that results in the landslide instability. However, the influence of runoff from bedrock slope on infiltration has not been considered by the existing numerical methods so that unfavorable infiltration is underestimated and the stability of landslide, especially those deep slides, is overestimated. In this paper, based on Richards’s equation and FEM, a 2D simplified numerical method is proposed, which can consider the influence of runoff supply on the infiltration of sliding mass. In the proposed method, calculation domain only contains sliding mass in order to avoid the numerical problems induced by the large difference between the permeability coefficients of landslide body and landslide bed (or slide zone), and rainfall boundaries are corrected according to the horizontal length of bedrock slope and saturation of slope surface. The seepage field and stability of an existing landslide in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area are simulated under the water level fluctuation of reservoir and the rainfall from Oct., 2006 to Dec., 2009. It is shown that the saturated zone in the trailing edge of landslide becomes significantly enlarged when the runoff supply is considered, and thus the stability decreases more significantly, which is consistent with the data from the displacement monitoring. In addition, rainfall trivially influences the stability of landslide if the runoff supply is not taken into account.

Cite this article

TIAN Dong-fang ,ZHENG Hong ,LIU De-fu, . 2D FEM numerical simulation of rainfall infiltration for landslide with considering runoff effect and its application[J]. Rock and Soil Mechanics, 2016 , 37(4) : 1179 -1186 . DOI: 10.16285/j.rsm.2016.04.033

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