Development of a Coupled DDA–SPH Method and its Application to Dynamic Simulation of Landslides Involving Solid–Fluid Interaction

Landslides involving solid–fluid interaction such as submarine landslides and landslide dams occur frequently around the world, which may bring severe damage to human lives and properties. Investigation of such landslides is thus of significance to hazard prevention and mitigation. To conduct the analysis, there are three key points to be addressed: (a) the landslide failure process, (b) the free surface flow, and (c) the solid–fluid interaction process. Discontinuous deformation analysis (DDA) method is suitable for analyzing discontinuous blocky systems and has outstanding advantages in simulating the landslide failure process. Meanwhile, smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method is well-suited for modeling the free surface flow. However, the consideration of solid–fluid interaction in these two methods is seldom, which somehow restricts their applications. With the aim to take advantages of these two methods, a coupled DDA–SPH method in two-dimensional case is proposed, in which the solid–fluid interaction is forced using a penalty approach. The SPH formulations are implemented into DDA code. Several numerical examples are presented to check the validity of the proposed method. A dam-break test is first investigated to show the success of implementing SPH into DDA code for modeling the fluid flow in later simulations of fluid–solid systems. Subsequently, the performance of the coupled DDA–SPH method is validated through a submarine rigid landslide, and the simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental data. Further, an extension study on the submarine deformable landslide is performed, in which the landslide mass consists of multiple blocks and a sensitivity analysis on the interface friction angle between blocks is conducted. Finally, a designed landslide dam is simulated to show the applicability and feasibility of the coupled DDA–SPH method.