文摘
Landslide dams commonly form when mass earth or rock movements reach a river channel and cause a complete or partial blockage of the channel. Intense rainfalls can induce upstream flows along a sloping channel that significantly affect downstream landslide dams. If a series of landslide dams are collapsed by incoming mountain torrents (induced by intense rainfall), large debris flows can form in a very short period. Furthermore, the failure of these dams can amplify the magnitude and scale of debris flows in the flow direction. The catastrophic debris flows that occurred in Zhouqu County, China on 8 August 2010 were caused by intense rainfall and the upstream cascading failure of landslide dams along the gullies. Incorporating the role of outburst floods associated with the complete or partial failure of landslide dams is an interesting problem usually beyond the scope of analysis because of the inherent modeling complexity. To understand the cascading failure modes of a series of landslide dams, and the dynamic effect these failures have on the enlargement of debris flow scales, experimental tests are conducted in sloping channels mimicking field conditions, with the modeled landslide dams distributed along a sloping channel and crushed by different upstream flows. The failure modes of three different cascades of landslide dams fully or partially blocking a channel river are parametrically studied. This study illustrates that upstream flows can induce a cascading failure of the landslide dams along a channel. Overtopping is the primary failure mechanism, while piping and erosion can also induce failures for different constructed landslide dams. A cascading failure of landslide dams causes a gradually increasing flow velocity and discharge of the front flow, resulting in an increase in both diameter and percentage of the entrained coarse particles. Furthermore, large landslide blockages can act to enhance the efficiency of river incision, or conversely to induce aggradation of fluvial sediments, depending on the blockage factor of the landslide dams and upstream discharge.
