SPH Modelling of the 3D laboratory experiments on the Vajont landslide

pubblicazioni - Presentazione

SPH Modelling of the 3D laboratory experiments on the Vajont landslide

pubblicazioni - Presentazione

SPH Modelling of the 3D laboratory experiments on the Vajont landslide

Il disastro del Vajont avvenuto il 9 ottobre 1963 sul versante settentrionale del monte Toc, rappresenta un fenomeno di proporzioni ampie e di particolare complessità la cui dinamica non fu prevista con l’adeguato livello di accuratezza richiesto dalla pericolosità dell’evento.In questo lavoro viene presentato un modello numerico tridimensionale (basato su tecnica SPH) con lo scopo di riprodurre taluni aspetti di interesse del fenomeno (tempo di caduta della frana e risalita dell’onda) mettendo in evidenza l’influenza che su questi esercitano alcuni fattori fisici (reologia dell’ammasso franoso).

The Vajont disaster occurred on October 9, 1963: a huge landslide fell into the Erto hydroelectric reservoir and generated a wave which overtopped the Vajont dam, sweeping away the downstream village of Longarone and causing about 2000 casualties. Before the catastrophic event, some experiments were performed at the Research Centre of Nove (Treviso, Italy) on a 3D physical model of the Vajont reservoir (Fig.1).

Owing to the uncertainties on the complex physical mechanism (i.e. volume of the landslide and its kinematic), the energy of the generated wave was underestimated. These experimental data, which were made available recently, have been considered to perform numerical experiments of the Vajont landslide with the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH).

The research, apart from the evaluation of the maximum wave run-up on the mountain side, aimed at using the numerical tool to give a theoretical interpretation of the relative importance between the different physical mechanisms which concurred in generating the catastrophe.