Citation

Khaldoun A, Moller P, Fall A, Wegdam G, De Leeuw B, Méheust Y, Otto Fossum J, Bonn D. Phys. Rev. Lett. 2009; 103(18).

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, American Physical Society)

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.188301

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

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. 2009 The American Physical Society.