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Clay landslide movement triggered by artificial vibrations: new insights from monitoring data

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Abstract

Slope stability is influenced by a number of factors that modify the resisting/acting force ratio control landslide initiation and movement velocity. Among these, artificial vibrations have been identified as an important degrading factor for soil strength, but it is not fully clear if they can trigger or modulate movements of clay landslides. To contribute to a better understanding of the potential effect of vibrations on landslide movement, also in terms of boundary conditions, we analyzed monitoring data acquired at the toe of the Pietrafitta landslide in southern Italy. This landslide adjoins the SS87 national road that suffered periodic closure due to landslide activity and in April 2016 operates daytime only for risk mitigation purpose. This condition promoted a better identification of a potential cause-effect relation between traffic vibration and landslide movement. Results from data analysis and landslide modeling suggest that in condition of incipient movement, artificial vibrations, also of limited amplitude, are able to directly initiate clay landslide movement that due to the viscous nature of the involved material exhibit a specific displacement pattern that is not consistent with a sliding block model.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the editor Adrián Riquelme, two anonymous reviewers for their constructive review of the paper, and Stefania Sica of the Department of Civil Engineering of the University of Sannio for suggestions and stimulating discussions that lead to many improvements to the manuscript.

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Data are available upon request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth, Environmental and Resource Sciences, Federico II University of Naples, Monte Sant’Angelo Campus, Naples, Italy

    Luigi Guerriero

  2. Department of Science and Technology, University of Sannio, Benevento, Italy

    Giuseppe Ruzza, Rosalba Maresca, Francesco M. Guadagno & Paola Revellino

Authors
  1. Luigi Guerriero
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  2. Giuseppe Ruzza
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  3. Rosalba Maresca
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  4. Francesco M. Guadagno
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  5. Paola Revellino
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Contributions

Conceptualization: Francesco M. Guadagno and Luigi Guerriero

Data curation: Rosalba Maresca, Giueppe Ruzza, and Paola Revellino

Formal analysis: Luigi Guerriero and Rosalba Maresca

Funding acquisition: Paola Revellino

Investigation: Luigi Guerriero, Rosalba Maresca, and Giuseppe Ruzza

Methodology: Luigi Guerriero

Project administration: Paola Revellino

Resources: Paola Revellino

Software: Luigi Guerriero, Rosaba Maresca, and Giuseppe Ruzza

Supervision: Paola Revellino and Francesco M. Guadagno

Visualization: Luigi Guerriero and Giuseppe Ruzza

Writing - original draft: Luigi Guerriero, Giuseppe Ruzza, and Rosalba Maresca

Writing - review and editing: Luigi Guerriero, Paola Revellino, and Francesco M. Guadagno

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Luigi Guerriero.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Guerriero, L., Ruzza, G., Maresca, R. et al. Clay landslide movement triggered by artificial vibrations: new insights from monitoring data. Landslides 18, 2949–2957 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-021-01685-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-021-01685-7

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