Simulating the entire rainfall-induced landslide process using the material point method for unsaturated soil with implicit and explicit formulations

Abstract Rainfall-induced landslides cause various types of damage, including damage to infrastructure, leading to devastating economic losses and human casualties. Although various numerical methods have been developed to predict landslide occurrence and the extent of sediment flow, three-dimensional analysis of the entire landslide process in a unified manner is still challenging owing to limitations in computational efficiency and the representation of deformation and flow. In this study, we present a numerical method of rainfall-induced landslides using the coupled hydromechanical material point method (MPM) for unsaturated porous media based on implicit and explicit formulations, which enables the efficient analysis of all rainfall-induced landslide processes, including both quasi-static and dynamic processes. The developed method includes an implicit MPM based on a simplified formulation, which is first applied to the quasi-static analysis in the pre-failure stages in which rainwater infiltrates the ground. The explicit MPM is then applied to the dynamic analysis for post-failure stages in which the ground collapses and flows. A constitutive law for soils is improved in the simulation of landslide initiation and sediment flow by incorporating the effect of cohesion in a visco-plastic model for granular materials. The proposed method was applied to a three-dimensional terrain model of Ashikita town, Kumamoto, Japan, where an actual landslide occurred owing to intense rainfall on July 3–4, 2020. Numerical results from the proposed hydromechanical coupling compared with single-phase MPM indicated that pore water plays an important role in understanding all rainfall-induced landslide processes, from landslide initiation to sediment discharge.