Catastrophic landslides due to frictional heating of the failure plane

In this paper catastrophic landslides on a discrete failure plane are considered, which are explained by a mechanism of frictional heat generation that gives rise to high pore-water pressures generation inside the shear band. The problem is governed by a set of coupled diffusion–generation equations for the pore pressure and the temperature inside the shear band at the base of the landslide. The thermo-poro-mechanical coupling leads to frictional softening due to effective stress reduction and explains the extremely low apparent friction angles for rapid slides documented in the literature. The analysis suggests also that the shear band thickness must scale with the geometric dimensions of the slide. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.