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Investigation and dynamic analysis of a catastrophic rock avalanche on September 23, 1991, Zhaotong, China

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Abstract

At 6:10 p.m. on September 23, 1991, a catastrophic rock avalanche occurred in Zhaotong, Yunnan, southwestern China. Over 216 people were killed when the Touzhai village was overwhelmed directly in the path of the landslide. The landslide involved the failure of about 12 Mm3 of jointed basaltic rock mass from the source area. The displaced materials ran out a horizontal distance of 3650 m over a vertical distance of 960 m, equivalent to a Fahrböschung of 14.7°, and covered an area of 1.38 km2. To provide information for hazard zonation of similar type of potential landslides in the same area, we used a dynamic model (DAN-W) with three alternative rheological models to simulate the runout behaviour of the displaced landslide materials and found that a combination of the frictional model and Voellmy model could provide the best performance in simulating this landslide. The simulated results indicated that the duration of the movement is estimated at about 175 s for a mean velocity 21 m/s.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41272382 and 41372332) and National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (No. 41225011). We are grateful to Prof. O. Hungr for supplying a copy of the DAN-W software.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Ocean Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Aiguo Xing

  2. Research Center on Landslides, Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, Uji, 611-0011, Japan

    Gonghui Wang

  3. China Institute of Geo-Environment Monitoring, Beijing, 100081, China

    Yueping Yin

  4. State Key Laboratory of Geohazard Prevention and Geoenvironment Protection, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu, 610059, China

    Chuan Tang & Weile Li

  5. Department of Civil Engineering, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, 650224, China

    Zemin Xu

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  1. Aiguo Xing
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  2. Gonghui Wang
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  3. Yueping Yin
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  4. Chuan Tang
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  5. Zemin Xu
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Correspondence to Aiguo Xing.

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Xing, A., Wang, G., Yin, Y. et al. Investigation and dynamic analysis of a catastrophic rock avalanche on September 23, 1991, Zhaotong, China. Landslides 13, 1035–1047 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-015-0617-y

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