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.

Domains: Earth Sciences

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⟩