Geomorphology 253 (2016) 547–550

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Geomorphology
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geomorph

The relationship between the slope angle and the landslide size derived
from limit equilibrium simulations

Xiao-Li Chen a,⁎, Chun-Guo Liu b, Zu-Feng Chang c, Qing Zhou a

a
Key Lab of Active Tectonics and Volcano, Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration, Beijing 100029, China
b
China Earthquake Networks Center, Beijing 100045, China
c
Earthquake Administration of Yunnan Province, Kunming 650041, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Katz et al. (2014) carried out a study of controls on the size and geometry of landslides using two-dimensional
Received 5 December 2014 discrete element numerical simulations. One of their conclusions is that in addition to the peak strength of the
Received in revised form 28 January 2015 slope material, the initial slope angle is another factor that controls the amount of material available for land-
Accepted 29 January 2015
slides, thus the size, of the resultant landslide. It means that in steeper slopes, more material disintegrates for a
Available online 15 February 2015
given material strength, and consequently the produced landslide is larger. However, in our studies based on
Keywords:
limit equilibrium simulations, the sliding mass volume decreases with the increasing slope angle for a given ma-
Slope stability terial strength, just contrary to the result of Katz et al. One possible explanation is that when the slope angle in our
General limit equilibrium (GLE) model increases, the geometry of the potential critical slip surface changes, leading to a decrease of the amount of
Factor of safety (Fs) material available for potential sliding that compensates the increasing gravity effect owing to the enlargement of
Landslide volume the slope angle. It suggests that there exist different controls of the slope angle on the landslide size for given
material strength.
© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction 2. Methods

Katz et al. (2014) carried out a study of controls on the size and ge-
ometry of landslides through two-dimensional discrete element nu-
merical simulations. They hypothesized that the observed global
characteristic landslide size is a result of the limited thickness of
disintegrated and weathered material that exists on hillslopes. They
also suggested that the primary controls on the landslide geometry
could be proved to be the residual friction angle of the slope material
and the original slope angle. Moreover, they observed that the initial
slope angle is an additional factor that controls the amount of material
available for landsliding, thus the size of the resultant landslide. In
steeper slopes, more material disintegrates for a given material
strength, and thus the resultant landslide size is larger. However, in
our studies based on limit equilibrium simulations, the sliding mass vol-
ume decreases with the increasing slope angle, just contrary to the re-
sult of Katz et al. (2014). In this brief comment paper, we present our
work on this subject and attempt to explain the difference between
our results and that of Katz et al. (2014).
DOI of original article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2014.05.021.
⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 10 62009056.
E-mail address: 04chxl@sina.com (X.-L. Chen).
We performed two-dimensional slope stability calculations using
the general limit equilibrium (GLE) method incorporated in the soft-
ware SLOPE/W of GeoStudio for stability analysis of slopes. The initial
code of this software was developed by D.G. Fredlund at the University
of Saskatchewan and has been on the market since 1977 (Fredlund,
1974; Fredlund and Krahn, 1977; GEO-SLOPE International Ltd., 2010).
The GLE formulation satisfies two equations of factor of safety (Fs)
(Fs is the ratio between the total available shear strength along the
slip surface and the summation of the gravitational driving forces) and
allows for a range of interslice shear-normal force assumptions, show-
ing its advantages in the limit equilibrium analysis (Fellenius, 1936;
Janbu, 1954; Bishop, 1955; Morgenstern and Price, 1965; Fredlund,
1974; Fredlund and Krahn, 1977; GEO-SLOPE International Ltd., 2010).
The GLE method can be applied to any kinematically admissible slip sur-
face shape (GEO-SLOPE International Ltd., 2010), which makes it more
flexible and practical.
The SLOPE/W software provides some options to locate the position
of the critical slip surface within the slope body. Finding the critical slip
surface involves a trial procedure (Janbu, 1954;Bishop, 1955;
Morgenstern and Price, 1965). This is repeated for many possible slip
surfaces, and at the end, the trial slip surface with the lowest Fs is con-
sidered as the governing or critical slip surface. From previous work,

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2015.01.036
0169-555X/© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
548 X.-L. Chen et al. / Geomorphology 253 (2016) 547–550
the option Auto-Locate in this software can lead to a reasonable result
(GEO-SLOPE International Ltd., 2010). So we used the Auto-Locate
option to search for the critical slip surface instead of specifying a slip
surface. This is more reasonable because the slip surfaces are usually
undetected in many cases in reality.
To study the relationship between the slope angle and the sliding
mass volume, we constructed a two-dimensional homogeneous slope
model (Fig. 1). In this model, the slope height (H), slope angle (α) and
slope base length (L) are the parameters to determine the geometry of
the slope. The height of the slope was set to be 80 m, which was a con-
stant value. Meanwhile, the slope angle α was adjusted by changing the
horizontal distance L (i.e., tan α = H/L).
In the GLE factors of safety equations, the material strength parame-
ters are important for the equilibrium, which are characterized by mate-
rial cohesion (c) and internal friction angle (φ). In addition, material
unit weight (γ) here is used to determine the sliding mass weight or
gravitational force.
The slope material parameters for the simulation are listed in
Table 1, which are close to the Katz et al. (2014) model.
During simulations, the slope height H was kept the same, while the
right end of the slope base was moved from 210 to 60 m by an interval
of 10 m for each step, which means that the length of the slope base as
well as the slope angle were reduced step by step.
With these conditions, slope stability calculations were performed
by analyzing, for each slope base length, 2000 slip surfaces to determine
the one with the minimum Fs. Thus the potential slip surface within the
slope body, which was initially a curved shape, was determined, and the
corresponding sliding mass volume for each step was calculated.
3. Results
Totally, we obtained 17 simulation results. Limited by the space, here
we only present five representative results for slope angles 23°, 33°, 45°,
53°, and 65° (Fig. 2). They indicate that the potential slip mass volume
decreases with the increasing slope angle (Fig. 3). The potential sliding
volume reaches the maximum value of 9097 m3 when the slope has
the minimum angle of 23° (corresponding to the right end of the
slope base which is at the horizontal axis of 210 m, Fig. 2A), whereas
the potential sliding mass volume decreases to the minimum value of
474 m3 when the slope angle approaches 65° (the right end of the
slope base is at the horizontal axis of around 58 m) (Fig. 2E). It seems
that such a relationship is associated with the changes of geometry of
the critical slip surface. For example, when the slope angle is 23°, the
Fig. 1. Sketch of the model geometry. H: slope height. L: slope base length, which is the difference between the left end and the right end of the slope base. α: slope angle.
Table 1
Slope material strength parameters for simulation.a
c (MPa) φ (°) γ (kN m−3)
1.0 30 25.0
a
c (MPa): cohesion; φ (°): internal friction angle; γ (kN m−3): material unit weight.
critical slip surface is a big curved plane (Fig. 2A). As the slope angle
increases, the curvature and the length of this slip surface become
smaller, thus leading to a decrease in the thickness as well as the volume
of potential sliding material. When the slope angle is around 65°, the
slip surface turns into a straight plane with a very small length, corre-
spondingly the least volume of potential sliding material (Fig. 2E).
4. Discussion
The limit equilibrium method of slices in SLOPE/W is based purely
on the principle of statics, which says nothing about strains and
displacements. The lack of a stress–strain constitutive relationship to
ensure displacement compatibility creates many of the difficulties
to obtain a converged solution under certain conditions (GEO-SLOPE
International Ltd., 2010). For example, a steep slip surface makes it dif-
ficult to obtain a converged solution, which accounts for why the
greatest slope angle is less than 70° in this simulation.
However, the limitations do not necessarily prevent using the meth-
od in practice; it has been widely applied in slope stability analysis, and
the outcomes are versatile (Wilson and Keefer, 1985; Lam and Fredlund,
1993; Jibson et al., 2000; Miles and Keefer, 2001; Jibson and Michael,
2009; Frattini and Crosta, 2013; Chen et al., 2014). Comparing the sim-
ulation work of slope failure conducted by Katz et al. (2014) and this
study, except for the different model sizes, we found that the obvious
difference is the principles of simulation methods. Although it is difficult
to explain in physical mechanism the reasons for such differences at
present, we speculate that there may exist various controls of the
slope angle on landslide size for given material strength. One possible
explanation is that when the slope angle in our model increases, the
amount of material for potential sliding also decreases, which compen-
sates the increasing gravity effect due to the enlargement of the slope
angle.
The purpose of our simulation was to find the possible critical slip
surface within the slope body. So the processes leading to slope failure
and the position where the failure starts are not the concern. In Katz
et al.'s (2014) work, they indicated that the slope failure initiated at
 X.-L. Chen et al. / Geomorphology 253 (2016) 547–550 549

Fig. 2. Potential sliding surfaces and Fs values versus different slope angles as a result of the leftward motion of the right end of the slope base. Blue shaded regions represent potential slip
mass. The horizontal axis is the same as that in Fig. 1.

the foot of the slope and propagated upward along the slope. However,
in our study, as the slope base length becomes shorter (i.e., the slope be-
comes steeper), the geometry of the potential slip surface in the cross
section changes from a circular shape into a planar shape; meanwhile
the landslide is progressively restricted to the upper part of the slope
body, resulting in a decrease of landslide size (Figs. 2 and 3). Our results
are similar to those of Frattini and Crosta (2013), which indicate that
small landslides need high slope gradient to be unstable.
Indeed, circular and planar slip surfaces – which are automatically
located by the software in our simulations – are common rupture
types for landslides in nature as observed (Wilson and Keefer, 1983;
Keefer, 1984; Wen et al., 2004; Kieffer et al., 2006; Qi et al., 2009,
2010, 2011; Huang et al., 2010; Chen et al., 2012; Xu et al., 2013). Rota-
tional slides usually occur on curved rupture surfaces, while
translational slides occur on planar ruptures (Varnes, 1978; Cruden
and Varnes, 1996; Tusnaki, 2002; Highland and Bobrowsky, 2008).
What Katz et al. (2014) derived from their numerical simulations may
be able to explain some phenomena, while our modeling can also ac-
count for some observations. In our simulations, these changes in slip
surface geometry suggest that slope failure mechanics or types are
probably subjected to the initial slope angle to some degree.
5. Summary
This work focuses on the relationship between landslide size and
slope angle based on limit equilibrium simulations for given material
strength. Our results show that as the slope angle increases, the sliding
mass volume or the potential slide size decreases, just contrary to the
550 X.-L. Chen et al. / Geomorphology 253 (2016) 547–550
10000
9000
Sliding mass volume (m3)
8000
7000
6000
5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
0
0 50
Distance (m)
Fig. 3. Slip mass volumes versus the varying position of the right end of the slope base that represents the length of the slope base. The horizontal axis is the same as that in Fig. 1. As the
right end of the slope base moves toward the left, the slope base length as well as the slope angle are reduced.
results of Katz et al. (2014) from numerical simulations. One possible
explanation is that when the slope angle in our model increases, the
geometry of the potential critical slip surface changes, leading to a
decrease in the amount of material for potential sliding that compen-
sates for the increasing gravity effect owing to the enlargement of the
slope angle. This suggests that there exist various controls of the slope
angle on the size of landslides for given material strength.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the National Key Basic Research
Program of China (Grant No. 2013CB733205) and the Project of Special
Fund for Earthquake Scientific Research (201408002). The authors would
like to express their thanks to anonymous referees and Dr. Richard A.
Marston for their helpful comments.
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