TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2009//
TI  - Quick Clay and Landslides of Clayey Soils
JO  - Physical review letters
A1  - Khaldoun, Asmae
A1  - Moller, Peder
A1  - Fall, Abdoulaye
A1  - Wegdam, Gerard
A1  - De Leeuw, Bert
A1  - Méheust, Yves
A1  - Otto Fossum, Jon
A1  - Bonn, Daniel
SP  - 
EP  - 
VL  - 103
IS  - 18
N2  - 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.<p /> 
LA  - 
SN  - 0031-9007
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.188301
ID  - ref1
ER  -