Mathematical Geology, Vol. 38, No. 6, August 2006 ( C 2006) DOI: 10.

1007/s11004-006-9046-8

A Method for Modeling of a Creeping Slope with a Visco-Hypoplastic Material Law1

Geeralt van den Ham,2 Joachim Rohn,2 Thomas Meier,3 and Kurt Czurda2
This paper presents the numerical simulation of a creeping slope in Upper Austria, using a viscohypoplastic material law which describes the mechanical behavior of cohesive soils allowing for viscous effects, i.e. creep and relaxation. The method consists of: (1) determination of the parameters of the material law, based on laboratory tests on soil samples taken from the slope; (2) simulation of the laboratory tests with an element test program in which the used material law was implemented, in order to test whether the model holds for the soils studied; and (3) simulation of slope movements at different sections along the slope, assuming an innite slope. The simulation results t well with the eld measurements. This demonstrates that despite strongly simplied boundary conditions and limited availability of subsurface data (e.g. density) the visco-hypoplastic law is a promising tool for predicting creep movements. KEY WORDS: creeping slope; visco-hypoplastic law; Upper Austria.

INTRODUCTION Many slopes in cohesive soils exhibit gravity-driven creep movements as a result of viscous behavior of the soil material. Not only do these movements pose a threat to infrastructure and buildings on or below the slope, they may also represent an initial stage of fast landslides or earth ows with even more detrimental impact. Hence, it is important to be able to predict the behavior of creep movements in slopes. Numerical models can be a useful tool in this, provided that an appropriate constitutive law is used that describes the material behavior realistically.
1Received

26 June 2005; accepted 13 January 2006; Published online: 13 December 2006. of Applied Geology, University of Karlsruhe, Fritz-Haber-Strasse 2, 76128 Karlsruhe, Germany; e-mail: vandenham@agk.uka.de. 3Institute of Soil Mechanics and Rock Mechanics, University of Karlsruhe, Engler-Bunte-Ring 14, 76128 Karlsruhe, Germany
2Department

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0882-8121/06/0800-0711/1
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A wide variety of constitutive relations for soils have been used for slope stability analysis in literature, varying from very simple linear elastic laws to elastoplastic and elastoviscoplastic laws. Only the latter (that are mostly based on Newton, Bingham or Norton laws) may be suitable for simulation of creeping slopes as they account for viscosity of the soil material. However, many elastoviscoplastic laws are highly complicated, often not obeying physical laws e.g. with the consequence that determination of material parameters and calibration of the model cannot be performed with standard laboratory tests on soil samples. An overview of these models can be found in Duncan (1996) and Prevost and Popescu (1996). This paper presents the application of a visco-hypoplastic equation as an alternative for the elastoviscoplastic laws. Although it is a phenomenological law, the fundamental soil behavior mechanisms are described in an accurate way. An important advantage, compared to many of the above-mentioned constitutive laws, is that material parameters can all be determined with standard laboratory tests and are strictly separated from state variables (stress and density). The material law has been validated for many different geotechnical problems (e.g. calculation of slope deformations due to open pit mining (Karcher, 2003)), but application to a large creeping slope has not been done before. The objective of this paper is to show the applicability of this law for modeling large creeping slopes. The model has been applied to a creeping slope in Upper Austria, including: (1) determination of parameters of the material law based on laboratory tests on soil samples taken from the slope; (2) simulation of the laboratory tests in order to test the validity of the material law for the soils studied; and (3) testing the model on the slope by back-prediction of measured creep movements.

VISCO-HYPOPLASTIC LAW The visco-hypoplastic law represents a tensorial, incremental non-linear function, describing the time dependent stress-strain behavior of soils with viscous properties. The incremental stiffness, by which strain rate is related to stress rate, depends on density, effective mean stress and most recent deformation history. The material law was developed as an extension of hypoplasticity, which describes the behavior of cohesionless granular soils and which distinguishes itself from elastoplasticity by, among other things, the lack of a yield surface and ow rule. The fundamentals of hypoplasticity can be found in Herle (1997). Modication to visco-hypoplasticity includes the adoption of the critical-state theory of Schoeld and Wroth (1968) and Roscoe and Burland (1968). Viscous characteristics of cohesive soils are taken into consideration so that creep, relaxation and rate dependence can be described (for comparison, the Modied Cam Clay model

Method for Modeling of a Creeping Slope with a Visco-Hypoplastic Material Law Table 1. Description of the Visco-hypoplastic Material Parameters and Methods for Their Determination Symbol e100 r (s1 ) c ( ) Iv Description Void ratio during isotropic compression with referential strain rate r at 100 kPa Referential strain rate Compressibility index Recompression index Critical friction angle Viscosity index Method for determination Oedometer test

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Oedometer test Oedometer test Triaxial test Triaxial or oedometer test

(Schoeld and Wroth, 1968), which is also based on the critical state theory, does not account for these). The non-viscous part of the model was taken from hypoplasticity. A detailed description of the one-dimensional version of the model can be found in Niemunis and Krieg (1996), and a three-dimensional extension is given in Niemunis (1996, 2003). The model is built up from material parameters on the one hand and state variables on the other hand, which are strictly separated. The visco-hypoplastic material parameters, which can all be determined by means of standard laboratory tests, are shown in Table 1. The state variables are stress state and density. A detailed description of the visco-hypoplastic material law (including the determination of the material parameters) can be found in Niemunis (2003).

STUDY AREA The model was applied to the Stambach slide, located in Upper Austria, near the village of Bad Goisern (Figure 1). The actual creeping slope is a dormant earth ow that reactivated for the last time in 1982. The trigger was a large limestone pillar of about 30 000 m3 collapsing onto the slope surface, causing excess pore water pressures within the slope body (Rohn, 1991). The slope material consists of the weathering products of two source materials: salt-bearing claystones, called Haselgebirge, and marls, called Fleckenmergel. Both materials are characterized by a high clay content, varying from 25 up to 60% (Rohn, 1991). Weathered Fleckenmergel contains, in contrast to weathered Haselgebirge, swelling clays and carbonates. With a length of around 1300 m, a maximum width of 220 m, and a thickness varying between 20 and 30 m, the total volume of the deforming slope was estimated to be approximately 8106 m3 . Figure 2(a) shows a cross section with the location of the boreholes.

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Figure 1. View on the slope from the South, directly after the last activation of the earth ow in 1982 (photo: Austrian Service for Torrent and Avalanche Control, Bad Ischl).

Figure 2. The Stambach slope, with (a) the geotechnical cross section and (b) the inclinometer measurements in borehole B2.

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Since 1988 the slope movements have been monitored using inclinometers (Figure 2), which reveal deformation rates of approximately 24 mm/yr at the slope surface. Only a slight decrease in velocity over time has been observed. Figure 2(b) shows the inclinometer results from borehole B2. These show that the slope deformation occurs rather homogeneous by over depth and indicate that clear shear-planes are absent. The slightly higher deformation rates between 15 and 20 m can be explained by the presence of a conned aquifer at the basis of the creeping mass. This was indicated by small amounts of water welling up at the surface as the base of the slide was reached during drilling. Pore-water pressures obtained from piezometers and the presence of freewater tables in the boreholes indicate that a free-water table exists near the surface of the slope. Comparison between rainfall and piezometer measurements within the slope mass showed that even at small depths pore-water pressure hardly reacts to rainfall, which is a result of the low permeability of the slope materials. For a more extended description of the geotechnical investigations of the slope see Rohn (1991).

METHODS Material parameters required for the visco-hypoplastic law were determined by means of oedometer and triaxial tests. Although the slope materials are heterogeneous, only a limited number of laboratory tests could be performed as a result of their high cost and time demands. While in the upper part of the slope the claystones and marls are found in unmixed form, in its lower parts these have been increasingly mixed. For this reason, material parameters were determined on samples of the Haselgebirge and Fleckenmergel in unmixed form, in order to comprehend the expected range of material parameters as well as possible. The visco-hypoplastic law was validated (e.g. testing whether the viscohypoplastic law is able to reproduce the experimental results) for these materials by simulating the oedometer and triaxial tests, using the measured material parameters. This was done using an element test program in which the visco-hypoplastic law is implemented and by which oedometer tests, triaxial tests and shear tests can be simulated. The same element test program was used to simulate the slope movements. This was done by simulating small soil-segments of 1 m thickness. Vertical effective stress acting on a given soil segment was calculated from its depth below the surface and the buoyant weight of the overlying soil material (the ground water table was assumed to be at the surface, based on the piezometers and free-water tables in the boreholes). As no quantitative data concerning the artesian layer found at the base of the creeping mass were available, it was not accounted for in the simulation. The buoyant weight was found for both materials to be 7.5 kNm3 .

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For calculation of the horizontal effective stress the coefcient of earth pressure at rest (K0 ) was approximated with the equation of Jaky (1944): K0 = 1 sin c where c is the critical friction angle (Table 1). The shear stress was calculated from the slope angle and the vertical stress. Because of very low deformation rates, drained conditions were assumed, so no excess pore water pressures could be built up. The initial void ratio was calculated from a given Over Consolidation Ratio OCR. This was assumed to be 1 using the visco-hypoplastic law, as more detailed information from measurements or about slope history was not available. The calculation was then performed in two steps. In a rst step, an initial state was generated applying the aforementioned stresses acting on the element and assigning the initial OCR. Relative velocities, i.e. the difference in velocities between two points at 1 m distance, were calculated from the inclinometer measurements. Simulated velocities of 1 m thick slope segments at different depths could then be compared with the relative velocities in the corresponding depths.

RESULTS AND ANALYSIS Table 2 shows the experimentally measured values of the material parameters for the Haselgebirge and Fleckenmergel. The values of Iv are in agreement with the classication of both materials as clays of low to medium plasticity. Figure 3(a) compares the observed and simulated results of the oedometer tests performed on the Haselgebirge samples. e represents the void ratio and and sigma1 represents the axial stress. The simulated curve was obtained after calibration. Figure 3(b) shows a comparison between the observed and simulated results of the triaxial tests performed on the Haselgebirge samples. On the left the stress path and on the right the stress-strain curve, where q = 1 3 , p = (1 + 23 )/3 and represents axial strain. The two breaks in the stress-strain curve indicate jumps in strain rate, which are required for the determination of the viscosity index Iv . The simulation results t rather well with the observations up to axial strains of approximately 3% at larger strains. However, the simulated stress path and stressTable 2. Material Parameters Determined on Samples of Haselgebirge and Fleckenmergel e100 Haselgebirge Fleckenmergel 1.13 0.96 0.031 0.037 0.0041 0.0045 c ( ) 31.1 28.4 Iv 0.014 0.016 r (s1 ) 7.6E-6 7.6E-6

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Figure 3. Comparison between simulation and experiment for (a) the oedometer test and (b) the CU triaxial test, both for Haselgebirge samples.

strain curve start to deviate signicantly from the experimentally assessed ones. This can be explained by inaccuracies of the triaxial test as bulging of the sample during axial compression, as a result of friction between the soil sample and base and load plates, results in heterogeneities in stress distribution. This results in increasing deviations in the experimentally-obtained curve as the strain increases. Nevertheless the critical friction angle c determined from the simulated stress path is similar to that determined from the experimental one. Similar results were achieved for the Fleckenmergel for simulation of both the oedometer and triaxial tests. Figure 4 shows the simulated velocities of slope movements for 1 m thick soil segments in borehole B2 using the material parameters for the Haselgebirge. The

Figure 4. Comparison between the simulated velocities of a 1 m thick slope section in borehole B2 (averaged over velocities in 4, 8, 12 and 16 m depth and simulated by the element test program) and the relative velocities calculated from the inclinometer measurements, averaged over the total borehole length (except for the lower 5 m).

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results are compared with the relative velocities calculated from the inclinometer measurements. Because of the lack of a clear trend in change of relative velocity over depth, the values depicted represent relative velocities averaged over the total borehole length. Measurements between 15 and 20 m were left out, as the excess pore-water pressures (which probably explain the higher deformation rates in this borehole section) were not accounted for in the model. The inclinometer measurements were begun about 6 years after the last activation of the earth ow, which means that no information is available about the deceleration history before the measured deformation rates. These rst 6 years were also simulated with the model, but are omitted in Fig. 4. (The model also simulates high initial deformation rates that decrease over time during these 6 years). Simulations were performed using the material parameters of Haselgebirge. It can be seen that calculated velocities t the measured velocities fairly well. Both simulation and measurement show a slight deceleration that diminishes over time. This can be explained by the gradually increasing density of the slope materials over time as a result of volumetric creep which always accompanies shear creep. In order to test the impact of density on the velocity (density increases with depth), slope movements were calculated at four different depths: 4, 8, 12 and 16 m. The simulation results show that velocity 0 decreases with increasing depth, but only to a very small degree. At 16 m depth the velocity is around 0.6% smaller than at 4 m depth. This indicates that the inuence of increasing density over depth is negligible. Consequently, the curve depicted in Fig. 4 represents the simulated velocity averaged over the four depths considered. Simulations of slope movements for slope sections in borehole B4 yielded similar results.

CONCLUSIONS A method for predicting a creeping slope with a visco-hypoplastic constitutive law has been described. The results show that with this method, creep movements can be simulated realistically despite simplied initial and boundary conditions. The predictive value of the simulations could be improved if the boundary value problem is solved using more realistic initial boundary conditions. However, with the element test program used in this study it has not been possible to test, for example, the impact of material heterogeneity or to analyse spatial patterns of displacements and velocities (which may be due to material heterogeneity). Ongoing studies therefore comprise nite-element simulations of the slope with the aim of making simulations of creep movements of larger slope sections (and with complex geometries) possible. Further improvement of the accuracy of the simulations could be achieved if material parameters would be determined on a larger number of soil samples taken from the slope. This would not only enable a better calibration of the material law,

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it would also provide a better insight into the spatial distribution of the slope materials. Once these improvements are executed, further application of this viscohypoplastic material law, using the method here presented, will likely be a useful tool in prediction of other large-sized creeping slopes.

REFERENCES
Duncan, J. M., 1996, State of the Art: Limit equilibrium and nite-element analysis of slopes: J. Geotech. Eng., v. 122, no. 7, p. 577586. Herle, I., 1997, Hypoplastizit at und Granulometrie einfacher Kornger uste: Ph.D. thesis, Ver offentlichungen des Institutes f ur Bodenmechanik und Felsmechanik, v. 142, Univ. of Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, 123 p. Jaky, J., 1944, The coefcient of earth pressure at rest. (A nyugalmi nyomas tenyezoje): J. Soc. Hung. Eng. Arch. (Magyar Mernok es Epitesz-Egylet Kozlonye), p. 355358. (in Hungarian) Karcher, C., 2003, Tagebaubedingte Deformationen im Lockergestein: Ph.D. thesis, Ver offentlichungen des Institutes f ur Bodenmechanik und Felsmechanik, v. 160, Univ. of Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, 193 p. Niemunis, A., and Krieg, S., 1996, Viscous behaviour of soil under oedometric conditions: Can. Geotech. J., v. 33, p. 159168. Niemunis, A., 1996, A visco-plastic model for clay and its FE-implementation: Resultats recents en mechanique des sols et des roches XI Colloque Franco-Polonais, Gdansk, p. 151162. Niemunis, A., 2003, Extended hypoplastic models for soils: Dissertation for habilitation, Schriftenreihe des Instituts f ur Grundbau und Bodenmechanik, v. 34, Univ. of Bochum, Bochum, 233 p. Prevost, J. H., and Popescu, R., 1996, Constitutive relations for soil materials: Electron. J. Geotech. Eng., v. 1. Rohn, J., 1991, Geotechnical investigations on a large landslide in Bad Goisern (Upper Austria): Ph.D. thesis, Schriftenreihe Angewandte Geologie, v. 14, Univ. of Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, 193 p. (in German). Roscoe, K. H., and Burland, J. B., 1968, On the generalized stress-strain behaviour of wet clay, in Heyman, J., and Leckie, F. A., eds., Engineering Plasticity: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 535609. Schoeld, A., and Wroth, P., 1968, Critical state soil mechanics: McGraw-Hill, New York, 310 p.