ABSTRACT
The sustainability of protection structures has been attracting attention in recent times, especially after the introduction of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. However, such an issue has been hardly discussed in the case of flow-like landslides. Here the concept of de-formable protection systems made up of granular soil reinforced by geogrids is explored and compared to more traditional concrete rigid walls. The numerical analyses concern the impact of fast-moving landslides on these two types of protection structures to understand their performance in stopping the propagation of the flow. To this aim, an advanced numerical model-ling capable to consider the non-zero initial velocity of the landslide and the large deformation occurring inside both the landslide and the structure is used. Both the landslide soil and the barrier material are simulated as frictional elasto-plastic non-associative media. The role and the time-space evolution of the pore-water pressure inside the landslide material under different impact scenarios are computed. Furthermore, the amount, type, and features of the needed construction materials are compared towards a sound assessment of the sustainability of both solutions.
