542

2017,29(4):542-551
DOI: 10.1016/S1001-6058(16)60767-9

Numerical simulation of submarine landslide tsunamis using particle based

methods *

Liu-chao Qiu (邱流潮)1, Feng Jin (金峰) 2, Peng-zhi Lin (林鹏智)3, Yi Liu (刘毅)4, Yu Han (韩宇)1
1. College of Water Resources and Civil Engineering, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, China,
E-mail: qiuliuchao@cau.edu.cn
2. State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Hydraulic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
3. State Key Laboratory of Hydraulics and Mountain River Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065,
China
4. State Key Laboratory of Simulation and Regulation of Water Cycle in River Basin, China Institute of Water
Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing 100038, China

(Received July 30 2016, Revised November 30, 2016)

Abstract: This paper presents the simulation of tsunamis due to rigid and deformable landslides with consideration of submerged
conditions by using particle methods. The smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), as a particle based method, is for solving
problems of fast moving boundaries in the field of continuum mechanics. Other particle based methods, like the discrete element
method (DEM), are suitable for modeling the displacement and the collision related to the rigid landslides. In the present work, we
use the SPH and the DEM to simulate tsunamis generated by rigid and deformable landslides with consideration of submerged
conditions. The viscous free-surface flows are solved by a weakly compressible SPH and the displacement and the rotation of the
rigid body slides are calculated using a multi-sphere DEM allowing for modeling solids of arbitrarily complex shapes. The fluid-solid
interactions are simulated by coupling the SPH and the DEM. A rheology model combining the Papanastasiou and the
Herschel-Bulkley models is applied to represent the viscoplastic behavior of the non-Newtonian flow in the submarine deformable
landslide cases. Submarine landslide tsunamis due to rigid and deformable landslides are both simulated as typical landslide cases in
this investigation. Our simulated results and the previous experimental results in the literatures are in good agreement, which shows
that the proposed particle based methods are capable of modeling the submarine landslide tsunamis.

Key words: Landslide tsunamis, fluid-solid interaction, free-surface flows, smoothed particle hydrodynamics, discrete element method

Introduction landslide generated water waves are much more

The movements of massive rigid and deformable
bodies such as landslides, slump, rock falls, debris,
snow, or avalanches, volcano eruptions and quick clay
slides in or into geometrically confined water bodies
such as reservoirs, lakes, estuaries and bays may
produce catastrophic impulse water waves which are
often referred to as landslide tsunamis[1]. Although the
* Project supported by the National Natural Science Foun-
dation of China (Grant Nos. 11172321, 51509248), the Scientific
Research and Experiment of Regulation Engineering for the
Songhua River Mainstream in Heilongjiang Province (Grant
No. SGZL/KY-12).
Biography: Liu-chao Qiu (1971-), Male, Ph. D.,
Associate Professor
localized than seismically generated water waves, they
can overtop dams and destroy tail water villages, or
they may run up along the shore line to destroy the
villages on the shore. As an example, the Vaiont
disaster in 1963 killed about 2 500 people when the
dam was over-topped by as much as 245 m of water
wave. The prediction of the generation, the propaga-
tion and the transformation of impulse water waves
can help reducing the losses caused by these pheno-
mena, as it may provide an estimation of the hazar-
dous areas and the intensity of the hazard, and for
working out the appropriate protective measures.
Therefore, over the recent centuries, the scientific
interest is significantly increased with respect to the
landslides and the landslide-generated water waves for
the understanding of such problems. At present, the

laboratory experiment, the analytical solution and the
numerical modeling are three main methods to investi-
gate the landslides and the landslide-generated water
waves. The analytical solution is generally available
only for simple cases and is unable to account for the
whole process of landslides. The laboratory experi-
ment is the most important and straightforward way to
study the landslides and its induced water waves and
the resulted experimental data can be used to validate
numerical models. However, a scale model experi-
ment may be both time-consuming and costly to carry
out. By contrast, the numerical modeling, if properly
validated with laboratory experiments, may serve as a
more flexible and efficient tool. Moreover, the nu-
merical modeling can more easily provide flow
variables at any point of space and, hence, is better
suited to a detailed study of physical processes. Follo-
wing Wang et al.[2] and in terms of the mathematical
formulations, the numerical models can be categorized
into the Boussinesq-type model[3], the shallow water
equation model[4] and the fully Navier-Stokes model[5].
In particular, the depth-integrated shallow water equa-
tion is widely used to simulate the water wave pro-
blems and is solved by using the standard finite di-
fference or finite volume methods. However, the
application of this method requires knowledge of the
evolution of the bathymetry, the velocity of the sliding
mass and an estimation of the drag coefficients. In
addition, neglecting the vertical acceleration leads to
inaccuracy in the generation zone where the depth
changes rapidly, and on the shore, where the run-up
and the wave-breaking occur[6]. Heidarzadeh et al.[7]
made an excellent review of the state-of-the-art nume-
rical tools for modeling the landslide-generated waves.
The wave generation mechanism depends on the
initial position of a landslide with respect to the sur-
face of the water at rest. Therefore, three types of
landslides can be identified: the subaerial type, the
partially submerged type and the submarine type. The
present work will mainly focus on the numerical
modeling of the impulse waves generated by the
submarine landslides.
Numerical methods used for modeling the
landslide generated water waves can be divided into
two major categories: the mesh-based methods and the
meshless methods. The traditional mesh-based me-
thods such as the finite difference method and the
finite volume method are widely used for modeling
the landslides, as very mature methods[8]. However,
due to some limitations in the mesh generation, the
remeshing and constructing the approximation scheme.
the public interests turn to use the meshless methods
that remove the limitations of the classical mesh-based
methods. In the past decades, the meshless methods,
like the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and
the moving particle semi-implicit (MPS) method,
were developed within the Lagrangian framework. In
543
contrast to the mesh-based techniques, the meshless
methods do not require an interface capturing scheme
nor the moving mesh technology, which is a clear
advantage when the problem involves breaking waves
and moving boundaries. In this respect, Qiu[9]
successfully applied the SPH method to simulate the
landslide-generated water waves, Fu and Jin[10] used
the MPS method in predicting the landslide pheno-
mena. However, in most numerical simulations, the
rigid body landslide is treated as a series of moving
particles with a pre-defined motion. Hence, it is
difficult to predict the landslide movement, especially
for practical cases. As for a rigid landslide dominated
by discontinuity, numerical methods, including the
discrete element method (DEM) and the discontinuous
deformation analysis (DDA), are capable of modeling
the movement and the interaction between discon-
tinuous slides. Wang et al.[2] developed a coupled
DDA-SPH model to simulate landslide-generated
impulsive waves with consideration of the solid-fluid
interaction. For deformable landslide simulations, the
rheology models are desirable. As in most numerical
studies of landslides, the prediction of the motion and
the deformation of non-Newtonian fluids such as soils
and clays relies on the rheology model. The available
rheology models in literature can be classified into
three groups: the viscous models, the viscoplastic mo-
dels, and the frictional models. The linear viscoplastic
Bingham model is most widely used to describe the
rheology of a debris or mud flow.
This work aims to describe and validate the nu-
merical methods combining the SPH and the DEM to
simulate the submarine rigid and deformable land-
slides and the induced water waves. The SPH, as a
particle based Lagrangian method, was originally de-
veloped for astrophysical simulations and was then
extended to simulate free surface flows. Instead of a
mesh, the SPH method uses a set of interpolation
points placed arbitrarily within the fluid, with several
advantages as compared to the mesh based methods
when simulating a complex flow involving free sur-
faces and moving boundaries. More complete reviews
of the SPH can be found in Refs.[11] and [12]. The
DEM is also a particle based Lagrangian method
which was developed to describe granular materials
and is nowadays widely used in particulate flows.
Within the meshless framework, some effort was
made to couple the SPH and the DEM to model solids
moving in free surface flows. Ren et al.[13] developed
a two-dimensional SPH-DEM model to simulate the
wave-structure interaction by describing the move-
ment of the solids based on the multisphere DEM.
Canelas et al.[14] used a coupled SPH and DEM to
describe the motion of arbitrarily shaped solids in
viscous fluids based on the concept of the distributed
contact DEM introduced by Cummins and Cleary[15].
In this study, the viscous free surface flow is solved
544

by a weakly compressible SPH, with an advantage of mb

avoiding the solution of the pressure Poisson equation. f (xa )   
b
f (xb )W (xa  xb , h) (4)
b
The movement of the rigid slides is modeled by using
a

a multi-sphere DEM approach to enable the slides of

arbitrarily complex shapes to be modeled. The fluid- where b = 1, 2, , N and N is the number of
solid interaction is simulated by coupling the SPH and particles in the support domain of particle a denoted
the DEM. A rheology model combining the Papana- by a . mb , b , and xb are the mass, the density,
stasiou and the Herschel-Bulkley models is used to and the position of particle b , respectively.
represent the characteristics of the non-Newtonian The kernel function is one of the most important
fluid in the deformable landslide simulation. To inves- components of the SPH method. It determines how the
tigate the performance of the proposed method, the fluid variables are interpolated. Consequently, its
results of previous scale model experiments of rigid[16] choice affects the accuracy, the efficiency, and the
and deformable[17] landslide generated waves are stability of the calculation. The Gaussian, the Cubic
taken for comparison. Spline, and the Wendland kernel are commonly used
kernel functions in the SPH method. The Wendland
kernel has some advantages over the Gaussian and the
1. Numerical method Cubic Spline[18]. It is shown, in some cases, that the
particle clumping[19] and the numerical dissipation[20]
1.1 SPH method
can be reduced. The Wendland kernel is thus used in
For the landslide simulation in this study, we use
this paper. It is defined as
the following governing equations for the fluid phase
in a fully Lagrangian frame given as: 4
 q
W (rab , h) =  D 1   (2q +1) , 0  q  2 (5)
d  2
=  v (1)
dt
where rab = xa  xb is the distance between par-
dv 1 ticles,  D is 7 / 4h 2
in the 2-D case and 7 / 8h3
=  p +  2 v + g (2)
dt 
in the 3-D case, q = rab /h .
Following Lo and Shao[21], Eqs.(1) and (2) can be
where t is the time, v is the velocity, p is the written in the SPH discretization form as
pressure, g is the gravity acceleration,  is the
kinetic viscosity, and  is the density. d a
=  mb vab  aWab (6)
The basic idea of the SPH method is that the dt b
fluids can be represented as a discrete set of particles,
each assigned with a set of physical variables such as
dv a p p 
the density, the pressure, the velocity and the position. = ga   mb  a2 + b2  aWab +
Any function and its derivatives associated with a dt b   a b 
given particle can be approximated by a kernel
interpolation over the known values at its neighbour-  4 r  W 
hood. One of the major advantages of the SPH method m b  ab a ab
2
vab
 (  a + b ) rab 
(7)
is the ability to represent derivatives without a compu- b

tational mesh. Considering a function f (x ) at a cer-

tain position x , the kernel approximation of f(x) is
defined as
f (x )   f (x ) W (x  x , h)dx  (3)

where h is the smoothing length that indicates how
far a particle is influenced by the other ones.  is
the support domain determined by the smoothing
length h . W (x  x , h) is the kernel function. For a
particle a located at xa , Eq.(3) can be rewritten in
a discrete form as the sum over a set of particls as
where vab = va  vb ,  a denotes the gradient taken
with respect to the coordinates of particle a .
In this study, the fluid phase is treated as weakly
compressible where the density in the fluid is allowed
to vary slightly. The closure problem is solved by
using an equation of state, as a relation between the
the pressure and the density. Following Monaghan[12],
the relationship between the pressure and the density
for a particle a is given by
   
pa = B  a   1 (8)
 0  

where the constant B = c02 0 /  ,  0 is the reference
density, c0 is the sound speed at the reference
density and  = 7 for a fluid like water. The speed of
sound c0 is generally chosen as 10 times of the
maximum velocity in the fluid to ensure that the
fluctuations of the density are less than 1%.
It is a challenging task to implement the solid
boundaries in the SPH due to the kernel truncation. In
this work, the so-called dynamic boundary condi-
tions[22] are adopted for both the moving and fixed
boundaries. This method consists of creating boundary
particles that satisfy the same equations of continuity
(6) and state (8) as the fluid particles, but without
updating their positions using the momentum Eq.(7)
and their positions remaining fixed (fixed boundaries)
or moving according to some externally imposed
function (moving objects).
Finally the particle positions are updated every
time-step using the XSPH variant[12]
dxa m
= va +   b vab  aWab (9)
dt b  ab
where  ab = (  a  b ) / 2 and  is a constant, with
its value in the range between 0 and 1,  = 0.5 , as is
often used. This method is a correction for the
velocity of a particle a . This correction makes the
particles more organized and, for high fluid velocities,
helps to avoid the particle penetration.
1.2 Rheological model
The present work simulates the deformable sub-
marine landslide as a non-Newtonian fluid. Generally
speaking, the viscosity of incompressible generalized
Newtonian fluids depends only on the second pri-
ncipal invariant of the shear strain rate and a classical
constitutive law for these generalized Newtonian
fluids is in the form
τ =  ( D )D (10)
where the shear strain rate D = 0.5(v + v T ) and
its second invariant D = D D ij ij . This formu-
lation can also be used to handle visco-plastic fluids.
The Bingham model is one of the simplest model
and provides a satisfactory description of the visco-
plastic behaviour of the non-Newtonian fluid. A
variety of other Bingham models such as the bi-visco-
sity and Herschel-Bulkley models are often used for
submarine sediments to simulate the Bingham rheo-
logy of a viscoplastic material in low and high stress
states[23]. A bi-viscosity model is a piecewise visco-
545
plastic model using a pseudo-Newtonian viscosity in
the un-yielded region and a Bingham viscosity in the
yielded region. The Herschel-Bulkley model is a com-
bination of a Bingham model and a power law model.
In the Herschel-Bulkley model, as in the Bingham
model, no shear stress appears before the yield stress
point with a singularity at the point where the shear
strain is zero. To avoid this occurrence, Papanastasiou
proposed the regularization of the Bingham fluid
model by introducing an exponential term, which
decreases quickly with m D , where m is an adjus-
table parameter, thus smoothing out the viscosity
function in a Bingham fluid. With this idea, a model is
created, that is valid in both the liquid and solid
regions of the material. In the present work, we use
the Papanastasiou adaptation for a Herschel-Bulkley
fluid, which takes the following form
n 1 y m D
τ = [2  p D + (1  e )]D (11)
D
where  y and  p represent the yield stress and the
plastic viscosity, respectively, and m is the stress
growth exponent. In the limit case of m   , the
Herschel-Bulkley model is recovered and hence the
choice of the parameter m is actually a tradeoff
between the numerical issues and the accuracy of the
mechanical response. All simulations in this work are
performed by using m = 1 000 s .
1.3 Discrete element method
We use the DEM and the SPH combined to
simulate the interaction between the rigid body slides
and the viscous free-surface flows. The motion of
each slide is tracked based on Newton’s laws of mo-
tion as follows:
dU I
MI = FIc + FI f + M I g (12)
dt
dΩI
II = TI (13)
dt
where the mass M I , the velocity U I , and the angu-
lar velocity ΩI are for the solid I , and g is the
gravity acceleration. The force FI f is due to the fluid-
solid interaction and the force FIc represents any
solid contact that might occur. Integrating Eq.(12) in
time advances the linear motion of the solid whereas
Eq.(13) accounts for the rotational motion.
In order to calculate the fluid-solid interaction
546
force FI f , the boundary of a moving solid is
represented by groups of SPH particles and these
moving boundary particles have an inter-particle
spacing equal half of the fluid particle spacing to
prevent the fluid particles from penetrating the mo-
ving solid boundary. The fluid-solid interaction is
ensured through the interactive force balance condi-
tion based on the Newton’s third law of motion. Follo-
wing Ren et al.[13], the fluid-solid interaction force
FI f can be determined as
p p 
FI f =  mi ma  a2 + 2i   aWai (14)
i a   a i 
where the inner summation means the total force on a
moving boundary particle i belonging to solid I
due to the neighborhood fluid particle a .
Following Latham et al.[24], a multi-sphere app-
roach is used for modeling the complex-shaped multi-
body dynamics, in which the surface of each solid is
represented by a cluster of small spheres of a diameter
equivalent to the spacing of the moving boundary par-
ticles. The solids are allowed to interact via the con-
tact forces when the surface spheres of different solids
overlap. No relative movement between spheres of the
same body is allowed. Based on the multi-sphere app-
roach, the resultant contact forces and torque acting
upon a solid I are evaluated as
FIc =  (f ij , n + f ij , t ) (15)
i j
TI =  (Ri nij  f ij , t ) (16)
i j
where Ri is the radius of surface sphere i be-
longing to I , nij represents the normal unit vector
pointing from the center of sphere i belonging to I
to the center of sphere j belonging to J. f ij , n and
fij , t are the normal and tangential forces, respectively,
on surface sphere i of solid I due to surface
sphere j of solid J . The normal contact forces
f ij , n are calculated by
fij , n =  kn δn nij  n vij , n (17)
where kn is the normal spring stiffness, The overlap
δn = (Ri + R j )  xi  x j , where Ri and R j are the
surface sphere radii, and xi and x j are the surface
sphere centres. vij , n is the normal relative velocity,
and n is the normal damping coefficient given by
2 lg eij m* kn
n =  (18)
( lg eij )2 + 2
where eij is the restitution coefficient. The effective
mass m* = (mi + m j ) / mi m j , where mi and m j are
the masses of surface spheres i and j , respectively.
The tangential component of the contact force
fij , t is calculated by a Coulomb friction law using a
coefficient of friction ij . It can be expressed as
f ij , t =  kt δt tij  t vij ,t , f ij , t  ij f ij , n (19a)
f ij , t =  ij f ij , n tij , f ij , t  ij f ij , n (19b)
where kt , δt and t are the tangential spring sti-
ffness, the tangential overlap, and the tangential dam-
ping coefficient, respectively. The tangential relative
velocity vij , t = vij  vij , n and the tangential unit vector
tij = vij , t / vij , t . The tangential damping coefficient is
given by
2lg eij mkn
t =  (20)
( lg eij )2 + 2
where kt = 2/7kn and m = 2/7m* , The value of 2/7
makes the normal and tangential springs to react in the
similar time scales.
2. Results and discussions
2.1 Submarine rigid body sliding
As the first numerical validation case, the sub-
merged rigid landslide is investigated in this section.
The numerical model used in this simulation is based
on a laboratory experiment in literature[16]. In this
experiment, the landslide was modeled by a rigid
wedge sliding freely into the water along a 45o
inclined slope. The cross section of the wedge is an
isosceles triangle with a length of 0.5 m. The initial
water depth is 1m and the top of the wedge is slightly
below the water surface. The initial configuration used
in our simulation is shown in Fig.1.
 5477

Fig.1 Initial coonfiguration of submerged rigiid landslide

Fig.4 Vertical dispplacement time history of the rigid

r compared
with the expeeriment results

Fig.2 Effect off particle spacinng on the accuraacy

Fig.5 Comparison of the numericcally computed

d water surface
with the expeerimental resultts

2 0000 kg/m3, a normal

n springg stiffness of 105 N/m andd
a cooefficient of restitution off 0.8. The friiction coeffi--
ciennt of the conntact face beetween the slide s and thee
sloppe was not given
g in literaature[16]. We set the fric--
tion
n coefficient as 0.287 folllowing the work of Wangg
Fig.3 (Color online)
o Snapshoot sequences off the rigid landsslide
simulatiion at different times a [2]. A time step of 1×1004 s is used in this simu--
et al.
latio
on. In order tot achieve a particle spaccing indepen--
The deeveloped SPH H-DEM methhod is applieed to dennt solution, the
t particle sspacing is sy ystematicallyy
the simulatiion of the suubmerged rigid landslide pro- reduuced till furtther reductionn does not allter the solu--
t modeled fluid is the water
cess. In this simulation, the w tion
n. Figure 2 shhows a typicaal convergencce study withh
of density ofo 1 000 kgg/m3 and kinnetic viscosityy of WE E representing water eleevation. An initial fluidd
 = 1  106 m 2 / s . The soolid slide hass a density off the partticle spacing dp = 0.01, 00.008 and 0.0 005 m is usedd
for the convergeence study annd as can be seen that thee
548

solutions forr dp = 0.008 and dp = 0.005 0 are alm

most matterial propertiies are the sam n literature[25].
me as those in
4
the same. A time step off 1×10 s annd an initial fluid f Figuure 7 shows a snapshot aat t = 1 s wiith the color--
particle spaccing of 0.0055 m are used in the follow wing bar indicating thhe velocity m magnitude. Figgure 8 showss
simulations. The entire coomputation tiime is 2 s. Figgure the tangential velocities
v (TV
T ) obtaineed using thee
3 shows the subsequent snaps shots off the impact water
w pressent SPH meethod and the analytical so olutions[25]. Itt
wave at diffferent times byb the rigid laandslide usingg the is seen
s that in this case thhe solution is in a closee
coupled SPH H-DEM method. The colorbar indicaating agreeement with thet analyticall solution.
the velocityy magnitude in all snappshots. Figurre 4
shows the tiime history of o simulated vertical
v displlace-
ment VD of the rigidd slide com mpared with the
experimentaal results. It is indicated thhat the numerrical
computed displacement
d agrees well with the expperi-
mental dispplacement, which proves the accuracyy of
the SPH-DE EM method in i reproducinng the rigid land-
slide motionn under the solid-fluid interaction. The
comparison between thee numerical and a experimeental
results of thee water elevattion (WE ) proofile at times 0.5
0 s
and 1.0 s is shown
s in Figg.5. From thesse graphs, wee can
conclude thaat the overalll behavior off the free surrface
produced by b the SPH H-DEM methhod is in good g
agreement with
w the dataa obtained inn the experim ment. Fig.8 Comparison of
o tangential veelocities
The comparrison indicatees that the lanndslide-generrated
impulsive waves
w could beb simula- teed accuratelyy by 2.3 Submarine deformable
d saand sliding
using the SP PH-DEM metthod. The SPH-D DEM simulaation of thee submergedd
rigiid landslide is validated inn the previou us section. Inn
thiss section, a submerged
s deformable saand landslidee
willl be investigaated. The nummerical modeel used in thiss
sim
mulation is bassed on a laborratory experim ment in litera--
turee[17]. This expperiment conssists of generating the wa--
ter waves by alllowing a maass of sand to o slide freelyy
dowwn a frictionleess inclined pplane with a slope
s of 45o
(seee Fig.9). The channel is 44.00 m long, 0.30 m widee
Fig.6 Schemattic diagram of annular
a viscomeeter problem
andd 2.00 m higgh. The sandd mass is as wide as thee
chaannel, so thaat the experim ments involv ve a verticall
planne, as a 2-D problem.
p Thee initial verticcal profile off
the sand mass is i triangular. This mass is i held in itss
initial position by
b a vertical gguillotine watter gate. Thiss
gatee is lifted upp very quicklly at t = 0 s . The dimen--
sionns of the crosss section of tthe mass are 0.65 m0.655
T water deppth is 1.60 m and the top of
m. The o the triangu-
lar mass
m is initiaally 0.1 m below the waterr surface.

Fig.7 (Color online)

o A snapshhot at t = 1 s

2.2 SPH moddeling of annnular viscomeeter

In this section, a beenchmark prooblem of the tan-
gential creeeping flow inn a viscometter made of two
coaxial cylinnders is studiied to demonstrate the cappabi-
lity of the proposed
p metthod to solvee non-Newtonian
fluid flow problems.
p As shown in Fig.6, the outer o
cylinder is kept
k fixed whhile the innerr cylinder rottates
with a constant angularr velocity  = 1 . An innitial
fluid particlee spacing of 0.015
0 m is ussed in the com
mpu-
tational dom main. The tiime step t = 1  104 s . All
Fig.9 Initial configuuration of subm
merged deformaable landslide
 549

Fig.10 (Color online) Comparison snapshots among results ( y = 200 Pa)

In our SPH simulation, the deformable landslide

material is approximated as a non-Newtonian fluid.
The visco-plastic behaviour of the deformable
landslide is modeled by using the Papanastasiou
model. In our computations, the density and the
kinetic viscosity of the water are 1 000 kg/m3 and
110-6 m2/s, respectively. The mean apparent density
of the sand is 1 950 kg/m3. The rheological parameters
of the sand were not measured in the experiments but
chosen by trials and errors in literature[17] for the
numerical simulations. In the simulations of this study,
two different rheological coefficients are taken with
the yield stress  y = 200 Pa and  y = 1 000 Pa , res-
pectively. In both cases, the viscosity  p is set to
0.002 Pas, which is different from the values used in
the numerical simulations in literature[17]. This is due
to the necessity of our particular rheological model to
have a non-zero value for the viscosity, as is indeed
the approach used in literature[17] to have an imme-
diate liquefaction of the material. A time step of
1×10-4 s and an initial fluid particle spacing of 0.01 m
are used in this simulation. The smoothing length is
h , defined as 1.2 times of the initial particle spacing.
The entire computation time is 1.5 s.
Figure 10 shows the comparison of snapshots
among the experiment in literature[17], the previous Fig.11 Comparison of experimental and computed water sur-
numerical results in literature[17], and the present SPH faces ( y = 200 Pa)
results with the yield stress  y = 200 Pa at t = 0.4 s results agree well with experimental results. Figure 12
and 0.8 s. The deformation of the sand sliding and its shows, respectively, the sliding process and the water
induced water wave at two different time steps velocity contour of the submerged sand landslides for
behaves similarly in these three different methods. the two yield stress values of  y = 200 Pa and
Comparisons between the experimental and com-
 y = 1 000 Pa . In the simulation with a higher value of
puted water surfaces at t = 0.4 s and 0.8 s are shown
in Fig.11. It is indicated that the present SPH simulated the yield stress  y , the sand mass is so rigid that it
550
Fig.12 (Color online) Sliding process and water velocity contour of submerged sand landslides
almost keeps its initial shape. As it can be observed in
this graph, the wave amplitude and the slide velocity
depend on the yield stress of the sand. The slide with a
larger yield stress moves much more slowly and
generates smaller waves.
3. Conclusions
We present a particle based method to simulate
the full process of the landslide tsunamis due to the
rigid and deformable submarine landslides. In this me-
thod, a weakly compressible SPH is applied to solve
the viscous free surface flow. The movement of the
rigid landslides is modeled by using a multi-sphere
DEM approach to enable landslides with arbitrarily
complex shapes to be modeled. The fluid-solid inter-
action is simulated by coupling the SPH and the DEM.
A rheology model combining the Papanastasiou and
the Herschel-Bulkley models is used to represent the
viscoplastic characteristics of the non-Newtonian fluid
in the deformable landslide simulation. Numerical
results are compared with previous scale model expe-
riments of the rigid and deformable landslides to
validate the proposed method in terms of accuracy and
capability of reproducing the full process of sub-
marine landslides. Good agreement between the nu-
merical solutions and the experimental results is
found.
Acknowledgments
This work was supporeted by the Open Fund of
the State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engi-
neering of China, Tsinghua University (Grant No.
sklhse-2015-C-03), the Open Fund of the State Key
Laboratory of Simulation and Regulation of Water
Cycle in River Basin, China Institute of Water Re-
sources and Hydropower Research (Grant No. IWHR-
SKL-201505) and the Open Fund of the State Key
Laboratory of Hydraulics and Mountain River Engi-
neering, Sichuan University (Grant No. SKHL1425).
References
[1] Heller V., Spinneken J. Improved landslide-tsunami pre-
diction: Effects of block model parameters and slide
model [J]. Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans, 2013,
118(3): 1489-1507.
[2] Wang W., Chen G. Q., Zhang H. et al. Analysis of land-
slide-generated impulsive waves using a coupled DDA-
SPH [J]. Engineering Analysis with Boundary Elements,
2016, 64(1): 267-277.
[3] Watts P., Grilli S., Kirby J. et al. Landslide tsunami case
studies using a Boussinesq model and a fully nonlinear
tsunami generation model [J]. Natural Hazards and Earth
System Sciences, 2003, 3(5): 391-402.
[4] Bosa S., Petti M. Shallow water numerical model of the
wave generated by the Vajont landslide [J]. Environmental
Modelling and Software, 2011, 26(4): 406-18.
[5] Quecedo M., Pastor M., Herreros M. Numerical modelling
of impulse wave generated by fast landslides [J]. Interna-

tional Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering,
2004, 59(12): 1633-1656.
[6] Liang D. Evaluating shallow water assumptions in dam-
break flows [C]. Proceedings of the Institution of Civil
Engineers Water Management, 2010, 163(5): 227-237.
[7] Heidarzadeh M., Krastel S., Yalciner A. C. Submarine
mass movements and their consequences (Krastel S.,
Behrmann J. H., Volker D. et al. Advances in natural and
technological hazards research) [M]. New York, USA:
Springer, 2014, 37: 483-495.
[8] Zweifel A., Zuccalà D., Gatti D. Comparison between com-
puted and experimentally generated impulse waves [J].
Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, 2007, 133(2): 208-216.
[9] Qiu L. C. Two-dimensional SPH simulations of landslide-
generated water waves [J]. Journal of Hydraulic Engi-
neering, ASCE, 2008,134(5): 668-671.
[10] Fu L., Jin Y. C. Investigation of non-deformable and defor-
mable landslides using meshfree method [J]. Ocean
Engineering, 2015, 109: 192-206.
[11] Liu G. R., Liu M. B. Smoothed particle hydrodynamics: A
mesh free particle method [M]. Singapore: World Scienti-
fic, 2003.
[12] Monaghan J. J. Smoothed particle hydrodynamics [J].
Reports on Progress in Physics, 2005, 68(1): 1703-1759.
[13] Ren B., Jin Z., Gao R. et al. SPH-DEM modeling of the
hydraulic stability of 2D blocks on a slope [J]. Journal of
Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering, 2013,
140(6): 1-12.
[14] Canelas R. B., Crespo A. J. C., Dominguez J. M. et al.
SPH–DCDEM model for arbitrary geometries in free
surface solid–fluid flows [J]. Computer Physics Communi-
cations, 2016, 202(1): 131-140.
[15] Cummins S. J., Cleary P. W. Using distributed contacts in
DEM[J]. Applied Mathematical Modelling, 2011, 35(4):
1904-1914.
[16] Dong J., Wang B., Liu H. Run-up of non-breaking double
solitary waves with equal wave heights on a plane beach
[J]. Journal of Hydrodynamics , 2015, 26(6): 939-950.
551
[17] Qiu L. C. Numerical simulation of water waves generation
due to deformable granular landslides [C]. Proceeding of
the 11th National Congress on Hydrodynamics and 24th
National Conference oh Hydrodynamics and Commemo-
ration of the 110th Anniversary of Zhou Pei-yuanʼs Birth.
WuXi, China, 2012,1096-1101.
[18] Macia F., Colagrossi A., Antuono M. et al. Benefits of
using a wendland kernel for free-surface flows [C]. 6th
International SPHERIC workshop. Hamburg, Germany,
2011, 30-37.
[19] Capone T., Panizzo A., Cecioni C. et al. Accuracy and sta-
bility of numerical schemes in SPH [C]. 2nd International
SPHERIC Workshop. Madrid, Spain, 2007.
[20] Robinson M. Turbulence and Viscous mixing using
smoothed particle hydrodynamics [D]. Doctoral Thesis,
Melbourne, Australia: Monash University, 2009.
[21] Lo E., Shao S. Simulation of near-shore solitary wave me-
chanics by an incompressible SPH method [J]. Applied
Ocean Research, 2002, 24(5): 275-286.
[22] Crespo A. J. C., Gómez-Gesteira M., Dalrymple R. A.
Boundary conditions generated by dynamic particles in
SPH methods [J]. Computers, Materials, and Continua,
2007, 5(3): 173-184.
[23] Jeong S. Determining the viscosity and yield surface of ma-
rine sediments using modified Bingham models [J]. Geo-
sciences Journal, 2013,17(3): 241-247.
[24] Latham J. P., Munjiza A., Mindel J. et al. Modelling of
massive particulates for breakwater engineering using
coupled FEMDEM and CFD [J]. Particuology, 2008, 6(6):
572-583.
[25] Pleiner H., Liu M., Brand H. R. Nonlinear fluid dynamics
description of non-Newtonian fluids [J]. Rheologica Acta,
2004, 43(5): 502-508.