抄録
A new approach to simulate the mass failure process in riverbanks is developed and verified by experimental work. Both planer and circular failure modes can be expressed by this approach. The proposed approach is capable of distributing the collapsed bank material. Failure mechanism of riverbanks is described, failure plane is determined, shape of collapsed material is proposed, and travel slide distance is estimated. Eight experimental cases were conducted to investigate the processes of mass failure that follows the hydraulic erosion of an artificial riverbank with different heights and slopes. Deformations, developed cracks, plane of failure, and shape of deposited material were recorded. It is watched from experimental results that there exist many cracks are developed and thus many planes of failure are found, while in numerical simulation only one failure plane exists. The difference between simulated and experimental results may return to the large deformation of collapsed bank material which can't be simulated by simplified assumptions. Further improvements to the proposed approach are needed.
