Frictional heat during landsliding

Simulation animation:

Specific modeling:

A discrete element simulation system (MatDEM) was used to simulate the distribution of heat field in landslide sliding process.During the sliding process, a large amount of heat is generated by the violent friction between the sliding body and the sliding bed, which will generate thermal pressure and change the properties of the rock and soil mass to accelerate the sliding process.And this phenomenon is likely to be the inducing factor of the high-speed and long-distance landslide.We established a 220m×120m two-dimensional slope model containing 220000 elements, which contains two types of strata with a weak layer in the middle.

Slope profile (2000 elements)

Tesla GPU K20c was used to simulate the sliding process.The simulation showed the sliding process of 12s in the real world and took about 6.5 hours to calculate.

Velocity field distribution diagram and particle connection state diagram in 1s, 6s and 12s respectively

The lower middle part  and the foot of slope produce obvious heat zone, which is the fracture heat and friction heat generated by soil failure sliding.At the same time, the weak interlayer also produces obvious heat due to sliding shear action, and forms obvious nuclear heat zone.

The heat distribution diagram of the sliding process of the landslide model in 1s, 6s, 9s and 12s respectively 

We preliminarily explore the relationship between slopes of different heights and thermal peak and total value.

At 12s, the distribution diagram of landslide heat field at the heights of 50m, 100m, 150m and 200m respectively