Effects of the foot evolution on the behaviour of slow-moving landslides

The paper presents a time-dependent 2D numerical model which has been developed with the purpose of highlighting the effects of the slope foot evolution on the behaviour of slow-moving landslides. The model allows to quantitatively analyse how foot mass variations can influence the stability and the movement rates of the landslide. The landslide body is modelled as composed of two rigid blocks sliding on two different planes and interacting through a common boundary, which position is assumed fixed during the analysis. A finite difference approach is used to discretize the time. For each time increment, changes in model parameters are allowed, including variations in shearing resistances, g…