Quick Clay and Landslides of Clayey Soils

Asmae Khaldoun , Peder Moller (1) , Abdoulaye Fall , G. Wegdam , Bert de Leeuw , Yves Méheust (2) , Et Al.

1 LPS - Laboratoire de Physique Statistique de l'ENS
2 GR - Géosciences Rennes

We study the rheology of quick clay, an unstable soil responsible for many landslides. We show that above a critical stress the material starts flowing abruptly with a very large viscosity decrease caused by the flow. This leads to avalanche behavior that accounts for the instability of quick clay soils. Reproducing landslides on a small scale in the laboratory shows that an additional factor that determines the violence of the slides is the inhomogeneity of the flow.We propose a simple yield stress model capable of reproducing the laboratory landslide data, allowing us to relate landslides to the measured rheology.

Domaines: Sciences de la Terre

Asmae Khaldoun, Peder Moller, Abdoulaye Fall, G. Wegdam, Bert de Leeuw, et al.. Quick Clay and Landslides of Clayey Soils. Physical Review Letters, 2009, 103, pp.188301. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.188301⟩. ⟨insu-00563610⟩