Date
02 Jun 1988, 10:30 am - 3:00 pm
Abstract
In the Spring of 1983, a large landslide occurred near the town of Thistle, Utah which blocked major transportation routes and impounded the Spanish Fork River, inundating the town with 200 feet of water. While much attention has been given to the slide and its impact, very little has been directed toward a quantitative understanding of its causes. An analysis was performed of the Thistle landslide using the SEEPSLOPE finite element system in order to evaluate the mechanisms, factors, and causes of the failure. An elastic, perfectly-plastic stress-strain curve was employed in the analysis to model the behavior of the overconsolidated clay soils. It is concluded that the landslide was a compound, progressive failure which initiated at the toe and progressed uphill. Seepage forces played a significant role in the failure.
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Meeting Name
2nd Conference of the International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering
Publisher
University of Missouri--Rolla
Document Version
Final Version
Rights
© 1988 University of Missouri--Rolla, All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
File Type
text
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Leonard, Blaine D. and Olsen, Joseph M., "A Finite Element Analysis of the Utah "Thistle" Failure" (1988). International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering. 2.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/icchge/2icchge/2icchge-session3/2
A Finite Element Analysis of the Utah "Thistle" Failure
In the Spring of 1983, a large landslide occurred near the town of Thistle, Utah which blocked major transportation routes and impounded the Spanish Fork River, inundating the town with 200 feet of water. While much attention has been given to the slide and its impact, very little has been directed toward a quantitative understanding of its causes. An analysis was performed of the Thistle landslide using the SEEPSLOPE finite element system in order to evaluate the mechanisms, factors, and causes of the failure. An elastic, perfectly-plastic stress-strain curve was employed in the analysis to model the behavior of the overconsolidated clay soils. It is concluded that the landslide was a compound, progressive failure which initiated at the toe and progressed uphill. Seepage forces played a significant role in the failure.
