Abstract
Geological structures and ground undulation affect the mobility of translational landslides. Combining field investigation, back-analysis, and numerical simulation, we explore the role of dominant joint dip angle in controlling the mobility of translational landslides. First, the attitudes of the geological structures are revealed by aerial photography measurements. The pre-failure slope surface of the Wolong landslide, Southeastern Tibetan Plateau, is estimated from the contours of the adjacent stable hillslopes and the deposit bottom boundary. Then, to back-analyze cohesion and internal fraction angle of the landslide, we fit a maximum stable relief limit based on Culmann’s model to the upper envelope of 96 rock scars and 37 previously published landslides. Next, we design eight scenarios (S1–S8) for the simulation of landslide mobility, respectively, corresponding to the eight joint dip angles between 20° and 60°. The mobility index H/L increases with the dip angle β, as confirmed by the best-fit line H/L = 0.288 ln(β) − 0.698. The numerical results of the runout characteristics, velocity, and energy consumption of the simulated landslides in the eight scenarios indicate that (1) the momentum losses at slope break are closely related to the joint dip, apparent friction angle, and height of the mass center; (2) local undulations in substrate have an inapparent effect on mobility of large and long runout landslides; and (3) conventional mobility indexes need to be improved or modified when high mobile landslides encounter high obstacles at slope bottom, opposite hills, or mountains. This study will be useful for hazard evaluations of translational landslides in mountainous regions.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Professor LQ Zhang of Institute of Geophysics and Geology of CAS for constructive discussions about manuscript structure, back-analysis of slope strength parameters, and landslide mobility characteristics and for helping in manuscript revision. We thank Professor QL Zeng of Key Laboratory of Computing Earth Dynamics of CAS for help in geological description and landslide deposit identification. We thank Professor CJ Ouyang of Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment of CAS and J Zhou of Beijing University of Technology for help in Massflow numerical simulations. Many thanks to the Editor Manager and two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments on this manuscript.
Funding
The authors received the support provided by the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (STEP) (Grant No. 2019QZKK0904), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDA23090402), the grant titled Application of Synthetic Aperture Radar-Based Geological Hazard Analysis Technology on the Strategic Electricity Transmission Passage of Sichuan-Tibet Plateau (Grant No. 52199918000C), and the China Scholarship Council Foundation.
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Juanjuan Sun: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, formal analysis, writing–original, draft preparation. Xueliang Wang: conceptualization, methodology, validation, reviewing and editing, project administration. Haiyang Liu: investigation, visualization. Honghu Yuan: Validation.
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Sun, J., Wang, X., Liu, H. et al. Effects of the attitude of dominant joints on the mobility of translational landslides. Landslides 18, 2483–2498 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-021-01668-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-021-01668-8