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Types of Mass Movement

This document describes and defines different types of mass movements: 1) Falls are abrupt movements of slope material separating from steep slopes or cliffs due to free falls, rolling, or bouncing including rockfall, debris fall, and soilfall. 2) Topples are blocks of rock that tilt or rotate on a pivot and then separate, falling and bouncing down slopes including rock, debris, or soil topples. 3) Slides are downslope movements on rupture surfaces or thin shear zones including rotational or translational slides. Rotational slides move circularly on clay/soil slopes while translational slides move on planar weaknesses in soils to rock.

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552 views7 pages

Types of Mass Movement

This document describes and defines different types of mass movements: 1) Falls are abrupt movements of slope material separating from steep slopes or cliffs due to free falls, rolling, or bouncing including rockfall, debris fall, and soilfall. 2) Topples are blocks of rock that tilt or rotate on a pivot and then separate, falling and bouncing down slopes including rock, debris, or soil topples. 3) Slides are downslope movements on rupture surfaces or thin shear zones including rotational or translational slides. Rotational slides move circularly on clay/soil slopes while translational slides move on planar weaknesses in soils to rock.

Uploaded by

Rayon
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Types of mass movement:

Falls:
fig. 1

Falls (fig. 1) are abrupt movements of the slope material that separates from steep slopes
or cliffs. Most of the movements occur due to free falls or by rolling or bouncing.
Depending upon the type of slope material involved, it may be called rockfall, debris fall,
and soil or earthfall (Varnes, 1978).
fig. 2
Topples:
Topples (fig. 2) are blocks of rock that tilt or rotate
forward on a pivot or hinge, and then separate from the
main mass, fall on the slope, and subsequently bounce and
roll down the slope. They may be rock topples, debris
topples, or soil topples, depending upon the type of material
involved (Varnes, 1978).

Slides:
These are downslope movements of soil or rock mass occurring dominantly on
surfaces or rupture or relatively thin zones of intense shear strain. There are two types of
slides: rotational and translational (Cruden, Varnes, 1996)(fig. 3).
Rotational:
These slides refer to failures involving sliding movements on the circular or near
circular surface of failure. They generally occur on slopes of homogeneous clay,
shale, weathered rocks, and soil. The movements are more or less rotational on an

axis parallel to the contour or the slope. Such slides are characterized by a scarp at
the head which may be nearly vertical. They may be single rotational, multiple
rotational, or successive rotational types (Varnes, 1978) (fig. 4).
Translational:
These are non-rotational block slides involving mass movements on more or less
planar surfaces (fig. 5). The movement of a translational slide is controlled by
weak surfaces such as beddings, joints, foliations, faults, and shear zones. The
slide materials range from unconsolidated soils to slabs of rock and debris. Block
slides are translational slides in which the moving mass consists of a single unit of
rock block that moves down slope (Varnes 1978, Campbell et al., 1985).

fig. 3

fig. 4 Rotational Slide - slump

fig. 5 translational slide - debris

fig.6
Spreads:
These failures are caused by liquefaction whereby saturated, loose, cohesionless
sediments are transformed into a liquid state (fig. 6). Rapid ground motions, such as those
caused by earthquakes, are responsible for this phenomenon (Varnes,
1978).

fig. 7
Flows:
Flows (fig. 7) are rapid movements of material as a viscous mass where inter-granular
movements predominate
over shear surface movements (Varnes, 1978). Flows are divided into wet flows and dry
flows.Wet flows are non-cohesive flows, where internal distribution of differential
velocities varies systematically throughout the fluid mass. In cohesive flows, the internal
distribution of velocities resembles that of a plastic body in plug flow, and the moving
masses are usually bounded by visible shear surfaces.
In describing viscous fluids, the terms "Newtonian" and "non-Newtonian" are
frequently used to describe differences in properties that affect wet flows (Campbell et
al.,1985). In Newtonian fluids, the flow rate varies inversely with viscosity and is a linear
function of applied shear stress. In non-Newtonian fluids, the flow rate of the material
varies non-linearly with the shear stress, so that velocity and runout are difficult to
predict.
In general, we distinguish the following flows depending upon the nature of the
material involved in the movement:
debris flows (fig. 8), earthflows (fig. 9) mudflows (fig. 10), rock avalanches (fig. 11),
lahar (fig. 12) (Campbell et al., 1985; Pierson and Costa, 1987).

fig. 8 debris flow

fig. 9 earthflow

fig. 10 mudflow

fig. 11 rock and snow avalanche

fig. 12 lahar

fig. 13

Complex:
These are slides in which the failures occur due to a combination of the above types of
movements
(fig. 13) (Cruden and Varnes, 1996).
Unknown (fig. 14):

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The figures you can find at the following links:


http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/martel/Courses/GG454/GG454_Lec_24.pdf
http://landslides.usgs.gov/html_files/landslides/slides/landslideimages.htm

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