The 5th International Symposium on Slope Risk and Resilience

Slow-moving rock slopes undergoing long-term deformation may experience irreversible acceleration leading to catastrophic failure, driven by periodic groundwater fluctuations. Such hydrological forcing is typically induced by seasonal rainfall or glacial melt, which modifies local effective stress states along pre-existing shear surfaces. Under sustained sub-critical stress, the rock slope accumulates hydromechanical damage over time, progressively elevating the risk of transition to rapid landslide failure. The complexities in hydromechanical coupling and fatigue damage accumulation challenges traditional numerical modeling.
We propose a novel time- and stress-dependent hydromechanical damage model to simulate nonlinear displacement in slow-moving rockslides. We first verify this model via laboratory scale creep tests. The reproduced complete creep curve involves attenuation, steady and accelerated creep stages, which represent different phases in slow-to-fast transition for a long-term landslide. Then, we conduct a case study of long-term slow-moving landslides in the Alps, where cyclic precipitation and meltwater-induced aquifer level variations affect local effective stress. The simulation reveals that damage accumulation accelerates during pore pressure rise phases, manifesting as pulsed slip acceleration events. Cyclic aquifer level changes promote localized crack extension, enhancing regional permeability and expanding the zone influenced by hydro-mechanical damage. Repeated cycles ultimately drive uncontrolled acceleration in sliding velocity.
The model successfully captures progressive fracture growth, reproducing the complete creep curve and demonstrating its utility in investigating large-scale creeping rockslide, which is a task challenging for laboratory tests due to difficulties in simultaneously incorporating field scale, fracture networks, and hydro-mechanical coupling.
 

Groundwater,Landslides,Creep,Hydromechanical coupling