Seismic displacement of earth slopes incorporating co-seismic accumulation of dynamic pore water pressure

The earthquake-induced displacement of sloping soil mass is an important indicator of co-seismic landslide initiation. In this paper, an improved Newmark displacement model that considers the accumulation of dynamic pore water pressure (DPWP) in the soil caused by both vertical and horizontal ground motions is proposed. The model can quantitatively describe the dynamic changes of the seismic yield acceleration of near-saturated infinite soil slopes. Three different types of ground motion time histories are selected to compare the performance of the proposed Newmark displacement model, and the influence of DPWP accumulation on the slope yield acceleration and on the seismic displacement is obtained. The seismic slope displacement analyses indicate that the weakening effect of slope yield acceleration caused by bidirectional earthquake excitation-induced DPWP is more obvious than when only considering the horizontal ground motion, when the slip surface soils are in near-saturated state. The effect of initial saturation (S-r0) on the DPWP accumulation caused by vertical ground motion is also investigated. Furthermore, the accumulated seismic displacement can be reasonably explained by the frequency distribution characteristics of the ground motions. Finally, the numerical results of this paper show that the seismic displacement model seldomly considering the effect of DPWP, or only considering the DPWP induced by horizontal ground motion, can significantly underestimate the displacement value when the slip surface soils are in a near-saturated state.

Automated summary

In this paper, an improved Newmark displacement model that considers the accumulation of dynamic pore water pressure (DPWP) in the soil caused by both vertical and horizontal ground motions is proposed. The seismic slope displacement analyses indicate that the weakening effect of slope yield acceleration caused by bidirectional earthquake excitation-induced DPWP is more obvious than when only considering the horizontal ground motion when the slip surface soils are in near-saturated state. The numerical results show that the seismic displacement model seldomly considering the effect of DPWP, or only considering the DPWP induced by horizontal ground motion, can significantly underestimate the displacement value when the slip surface soils are in a near-saturated state.