The mega debris flow that occurred on 13 August 2010 in Zoumaling Valley in Mianzhu County, China has done great damage to the local inhabitants, as well as to the re-construction projects in the quake-hit areas. Moreover, it is of high possibility that a secondary disaster would reappear and result in worse consequences. In order to maximize risk reduction of this problem, the local government planned to construct seven debris-resisting barriers across each ditch for mitigation of debris flow hazards in the future. In this paper, the numerical simulation fields of flow velocity, pressure, and mud depth of the Zoumaling debris flow had been computed by using finite volume method software based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The Bingham fluid was chosen as the constitutive model of this debris flow. The debris flow geometry model was a 3D model. The initial conditions, boundary conditions, control equations, and parameters were determined and adjusted by the actual conditions and analyses. The flow field data obtained from numerical simulations were substituted into the finite element software ANSYS. Then the calculations of fluid-solid coupling action between the flow and dam had been done. All these results of simulations and analyses could be the guide and suggestion for the design and construction of prevention engineering of Zoumaling debris flow.

A mixture of sandstone and mudstone particles is often used as the main filling material for many agriculture-related and civil engineering projects, including rock-fill dams and foundations. The long-term rheological deformation experienced by rock-fill dams and foundations filled with this mixture is much bigger than that of coarse-grained and cohesive soils, due to the deterioration and softening of the mudstone particles. This study focuses on the rheological deformation of a sandstone-mudstone particle mixture, prepared by mixing sandstone and mudstone particles, based on the content by weight of four mudstone particle types. Confined uniaxial compression tests were performed to test the rheological deformation of 24 samples of the mixture, and a stress-strain curve was obtained for each test. On the basis of compression curves, the rheological process of the mixture was divided into four phases: linear, attenuation rheological, secondary attenuation rheological and stable phases. The three defining features of the curve, namely the rheological attenuation factors, attenuation rheology critical strain and limited rheological strain, were then determined and modeled. A segmented rheological model was then proposed, based on a modified attenuation rheological constitutive model for coarse-grained soil. The modelled results compared well with the experimental data, and the modelled compression-curve prediction was able to describe the two-stage attenuation rheology features (attenuation rheological and secondary attenuation rheological phases) of the sandstone-mudstone particle mixture.

The strength and deformation of a soil foundation are related to the strength of each particle. Maybe the shape affects the strength of a particle. In this study, single‐particle breakage tests were conducted on limestone particles of different sizes to analyze the influence of limestone particle shapes on the particle crushing strength. The results showed that 90 percent of limestone particle shapes were oblate spherical, subspherical, and long spherical particles randomly selected from the soil foundation. The single‐particle breakage test results showed that the characteristic stress of limestone particles increases with the increased particle size. The crushing strength of limestone particles increased with the increase in particle size. There was a significant size effect on the single‐particle compressive strength. The relationship between the characteristic strength and the particle size can be fitted by a power exponential formulation of four types of limestone particle shapes. The more irregular the particle shape, the smaller the Weibull modulus (m) and the power index and the more obvious the particle strength size effect.

According to the article named “Shear Strength of an Accumulation Soil from Direct Shear Test” by J. Wang, H. Zhang, H. Wen, and Y. Liang, this paper proposes a more reasonable expression to characterize shear strength in the original paper. The angle of shearing resistance is expressed by the combination of initial and incremental angles of shearing resistance, the relative compactions and water content were used to analyze the effects. The initial and incremental angles of shearing resistance are generally increasing with the increment of the relative compaction, increasing then decreases with the increment of the water content. The finial expressions which combined by the series of simulation equation was given to precisely predict the accumulation soil's angle of shearing resistance in relation to the relative compactions and water content.