Abstract
Forest plantations can help to reinforce soil and improve hillslope's stability against shallow landslides. Based on 3D finite element method implemented in SIMULIA software, this paper develops a 3D numerical simulation model to assess impact of forest's stands structure and 3D root system morphologies on hillslope's stability. A preliminary analysis is performed to assess the impact of different stand parameters and root morphologies on the slope's safety factor as well as on the volume of soil mobilized by a landslide. Regarding tree's root morphology, we found that the overall slope's stability mainly depends on the depth of root's system and on additional cohesion provided by the roots. Hence, tap-like block morphology provides the best overall stability improvement. Furthermore, among the stand parameters, inter-tree distance in the slope direction has the greatest influence on the slope's safety factor. The rectangular pattern of stand distribution exhibits the lowest inter-tree distance in the slope direction and significantly improves slope's stability. Finally, the volume of soil mobilized during a landslide shows noticeable variations through root block morphologies. However, for a given root morphology, the stand distribution does not cause significant differences in the volume of soil mobilized during a landslide.
| Original language | British English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 622-634 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Ecological Engineering |
| Volume | 95 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 1 Oct 2016 |
Keywords
- 3D finite elements modelling
- Ecological engineering
- Hillslope stability
- Landslides
- Root morphology
