Abstract: Landslide is a widespread and frequent natural disaster, and its behaviors can be studied using appropriate numerical methods, through simulating its moving process and then predicting and analyzing the potential disaster. This paper describes a three-dimensional landslide numerical method for landslide motions based on the continuum theory and μ(I) rheology of granular flows. We use the Navier-Stokes equations and μ(I) rheology to develop the continuity equation and momentum equation of landslide motions, apply a finite volume method for discretization, and construct a simulation solver based on OpenFOAM, an open source platform. Application to simulations of the inclined rough plane laboratory test verifies the feasibility of this method.

Key words: landslide, granular flow, μ(I) rheology, three-dimensional, numerical simulation