Failure mechanism of unsaturated landslide dam under seepage loading – Model tests and corresponding numerical simulations

Due to the rapid cracking, sliding and packing of its geomaterials, a landslide dam (LD) is usually weaker in structure than the undisturbed ground and is more vulnerable to seepage loading. In addition, since the naturally packed geomaterials of an LD are mostly in an unsaturated state, it is necessary to use a suitable constitutive model that can describe the mechanical behaviour of the soils under an unsaturated/saturated state in a unified way and whose material parameters can be determined in a rational way in order to accurately simulate the failure mechanism of the LD. In this paper, water retention tests and flume tests were conducted on model LDs prepared with three different ground materials. An unsaturated soil constitutive model was selected for the corresponding numerical simulations. Based on the results of water retention tests and triaxial tests, the parameters of the LD materials were properly determined. Using these parameters, soil-water-air coupling finite element analyses were conducted to simulate the flume tests on the model LDs. By comparing the calculated results with the test results, it was found that the numerical method used in this paper has satisfactory accuracy for describing the different failure mechanisms of the model LDs under seepage loading. The results indicate that the material properties of the LDs, especially the strength and the difference in void ratio between the unsaturated and the saturated states, play important roles. In addition, the influence of the rate of the rise in water head was also investigated by numerical tests. The purpose of this research is to provide a scientific basis for decision-making in the disaster mitigation process of LDs with a comprehensive method for understanding the failure mechanism of these LDs.