ABSTRACT
The discipline of slope stability in soil like materials is very developed with advanced analytical and numerical solutions for both static and dynamic problems. These approaches universally assume continuity of the medium where separation between the elements comprising the sliding mass is not allowed and all deformation is assumed to be concentrated along a well defend sliding surface. When the analyzed mass remains continuous throughout the deformation process, it becomes much easier to consider complex constitutive laws for the material, and to address pore pressure evolution with ongoing deformation. Moreover, addressing time dependency and creep deformation are easier when assuming continuity. Thus, the deformation and mechanism of failure of landslides have typically been analyzed assuming continuity, where the main questions were the triggering mechanism, the critical state at which the material failed, the amount of displacement, and possibly also the velocity evolution of the sliding mass. Famous landslides have been analyzed this way, for example the Vajont landslide (sometimes referred to as the Vaiont, or Mount Toc, landslide) in the Italian Alps (e.g. Mencl, 1966; Skempton, 1966; Jager, 1979; Trollope, 1980; Veveakis et al., 2007) which was in fact a rock slide (see Barla and Paronuzzi, 2013). Furthermore, continuity has been assumed to predict relationships between earthquake magnitude and expected displacement of the sliding mass (e.g. Jibson, 2007) based on analytical solutions which consider a single two-dimensional slice, such as those proposed by Newmark (1965).
