Finite Element Modeling of Displacement Behavior of a Slow-Moving Landslide

Modeling landslide displacement behavior is of great importance, especially in populated areas on sloping ground. There are different categories of displacements in mass movements' literature. One of the most common categories is based on the displacement rate, which includes the range of very slow to very rapid landslides with the rate range of a few millimeters per year to hundreds of meters per hour. In this study, a well-monitored slow moving landslide in Italy is selected and studied by finite element method. The fluctuations in the ground water level is modeled in different phases so that the calculated displacement outputs can be separately investigated for each phase. Input material properties and calculated data are calibrated by using the available monitored field data. The results in this study indicated that a simple constitutive model, such as Mohr Coulomb criteria, can be used with acceptable accuracy in predicting the displacement behavior of a slow moving landslide. This can be useful in day-to-day, real-time displacement estimations of slow-moving landslides, especially for a landslide management system