Material Point Modeling of Sand Column Collapse

Events such as landslides and slope failures happen suddenly and can be catastrophic. To predict the onset of such events, as well as the flow and final deposition of the material, engineers make use of numerical modeling techniques. These events are associated with large deformation and mesh-based methods, such as the finite element method, are not capable of modeling them due to mesh distortion. The material point method (MPM) is a particle-based continuum method capable of modeling large deformation and material flow. In this paper, MPM is used to model the sudden and dynamic flow of material by modeling the collapse and runout of a non-cohesive sand column. The results from two- and three-dimensional models are compared to experiments, showing that MPM accurately predicts the free-surface profile of the material during collapse. Furthermore, the model accurately predicts the runout distance with an error of less than 5%.