Creep model for unsaturated soils in sliding zone of Qianjiangping landslide

The mechanical behavior of sliding zone soils plays a significant role in landslide. In general, the sliding zone soils are basically in unsaturated state due to rainfall infiltration and reservoir water level fluctuation. Meanwhile, a large number of examples show that the deformation processes of landslides always take a long period of time, indicating that landslides exhibit a time-dependent property. Therefore, the deforma- tion of unsaturated soils of landslide involves creep behaviors. In this paper, the Burgers creep model for unsaturated soils under triaxial stress state is considered based on the unsaturated soil mechanics. Then, by curve fitting using the least squares method, creep parameters in different matric suction states are obtained based on the creep test data of unsaturated soils in the sliding zones of Qianjiangping landslide. Results show that the predicted results are in good agreement with the experimental data, Finally, to fur- ther explore the creep characteristics of the unsaturated soils in sliding zones, the relationships between parameters of the model and matric suction are analyzed and a revised Burgers creep model is developed correspondingly. Simulations on another group of test data are performed by using the modified Burgers creep model and reasonable results are observed,

Insight into the Permeability and Microstructure Evolution Mechanism of the Sliding Zone Soil: A Case Study from the Huangtupo Landslide, Three Gorges Reservoir, China

A large number of laboratory investigations related to the permeability have been conducted on the sliding zones.Yet little attention has been paid to the particular sliding zones of the slideprone Badong Formation.Here,we experimentally investigate the permeability nature and the mechanism of seepage in the viscous sliding zone of the Huangtupo Landslide.Saturated seepage tests have been performed first with consideration of six dry densities and thirteen hydraulic gradients,in conjunction with the mercury intrusion porosimetry test and scanning electron microscopy test for the microstructure analysis after seepage.The results show that seepage in the sliding zone soil does not follow Darcy’s Law,since there is a threshold hydraulic gradient(i0)below which no flow is observed and a critical hydraulic gradient(icr)over which the hydraulic conductivity(K)tends to be stable.The percentage of bound water could be responsible for the occurrence of i0 and icr.Furthermore,pore size distributions(PSD)less than 0.6µm and between 10 and 90µm exhibit positive and negative correlations with the i0,respectively,indicating that the i0 is related to the PSD.The mechanism accounting for this result is that pore water pressure forces fine clay particles into the surrounding large pores and converts arranged particles to discretely distributed ones,thereby weakening the connectivity of pores.The seepages in the sliding zones behave differently from that in the sliding mass and sliding bed in response to the permeability.