A Fiber Bundle Model for Soil

Shallow landslides represent a natural hazard to humans and infrastructures in mountainous regions. The suddenness and rapidity at which hydrologically-triggered shallow landslides occur has prevented the establishment of indicators for incipient failure and the development of effective early warning systems. Progress has been made, however, in understanding the physics of rapid failure and breakdown of heterogeneous materials using statistical physics, concepts of self-organized criticality, and more recently the so-called fiber bundle model. In brittle heterogeneous materials, the progressive development of failure is relatively well documented and precursory signals leading to global failure are observable through, for example, acoustic emissions. It is our hope that the fiber bundle model can be used to describe the progressive and rapid failure of soils on slopes triggered by rainfall. Recognizing the link between the statistics of failed fibers and acoustic emission signatures of failing slopes could help provide the basis for a detection method and an early warning system for landslides.

Team: Dani Or
Funding: Competence Center Environment and Sustainability
Students: Gernot Michlmayr
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