Abstract
The material point method is a first-line choice in modeling large-deformation problems and has been widely utilized to investigate landslide dynamics. However, topographic complexity and computational demand have often hindered three-dimensional implementations.
Here, we propose an algorithm for the virtualization of the substratum, in which the latter can be defined on a regular background grid as a non-zero kinematic boundary condition permitting frictional contact. In this setup, the computational power can be fully employed to model the moving mass.
To evaluate the algorithm, we successfully simulated a rolling ball and flume experiments. Then, we took the Yanyuan landslide (27 degrees 29 ' 25"N, 101 degrees 01 ' 38 '' E) as an example to test the performance in a real case.
By speeding up computation by similar to 90 times, we argue that the proposed algorithm can promote accurate three-dimensional modeling of landslides and facilitate physically-based hazard assessments.