Investigation of landslide failure mechanisms adjacent to lignite mining operations in North Bohemia (Czech Republic) through a limit equilibrium/finite element modelling approach

Abstract

Understanding the impact of data uncertainty is a fundamental part of ensuring safe design of manmade excavations. Although good levels of knowledge are achievable from field investigations and experience, a natural geological environment is subject to intrinsic variability that may compromise the correct prediction of the system response to the perturbations caused by mining, with direct consequences for the stability and safety of the operations. Different types of geoscientific evidence, including geological, geomorphic, geotechnical, geomatics, and geophysical data have been used to develop and perform two-dimensional Limit Equilibrium and Finite Element Method stability analyses of a lignite open-pit mine in North Bohemia (Czech Republic) affected by recent landslides. A deterministicprobabilistic approach was adopted to investigate the effect of uncertainty of the input parameters on model response. The key factors affecting the system response were identified by specific Limit Equilibrium sensitivity analyses and studied in further detail by Finite Element probabilistic analyses and the results were compared. The work highlights that complementary use of both approaches can be recommended for routine checks of model response and interpretation of the associated results. Such an approach allows a reduction of system uncertainty and provides an improved understanding of the landslides under study. Importantly, two separate failure mechanisms have been identified from the analyses performed and verified through comparisons with inclinometer data and field observations. The results confirm that the water table level and material input parameters have the greatest influence on the stability of the slope.

Law of Movement of Discontinuous Deformation of Strata and Ground with a Thick Loess Layer and Thin Bedrock in Long Wall Mining

“…Taking Poland as an example, the monitoring, formation mechanism and prediction model of coal mining collapse pit are focused on. The third type of discontinuous deformation caused by mining is landslides, such as in China [35], India [36], Spain [37], Australia [38], Czech Republic [39], Turkey [40], Greece [41], Russia [42], Slovakia [43], etc. Well mining and open-pit mining cause surface landslides, while open-pit mining induces more landslides.…”

Geo‐integrated assessment of the landslide zone around Gadora along NH 58 of the Garhwal Himalayas, India

“…The 2D ERT with lateral and vertical information along with 1D borehole information could reveal the near-surface characteristics of the landslide. This also establishes the necessity and importance of borehole information in interpreting ERT results and thus characterizing a landslide (Crawford et al 2018;Claudio et al, 2018). It could also be deduced that the right flank at lower elevations (i.e., at toe) is composed of WD on surface with FD at core up to a maximum depth of about 10 m and is underlain by a thick cover of loose saturated colluviums (refer to CC' section of ERT).…”

“…The establishment of near-surface geometric, material and hydrological models of hill slopes is important for stability assessment of landslide zones and subsequently important for the effective design of control measures for landslide disaster mitigation. Various researchers have investigated landslide areas using borehole explorations (Siddique et al, 2015;Gupta et al, 2016;Khamkar et al, 2018) and geophysical methods (Beres et al, 2002;Grandjean and Leparoux, 2004;Merritt et al, 2014;Uhlemann et al, 2017;Claudio et al, 2018;Crawford et al, 2018;Mita et al, 2018;Pappalardo et al, 2018;Falae et al, 2019a;Whiteley et al, 2019) separately. However, some researchers have also applied a multidisciplinary approach (Merritt et al, 2014; Ausilio and Figure 1 Geological map of the study area indicating the location of the Gadora landslide zone.…”

The Challenges of Open-Pit Mining in the Vicinity of the Salt Dome (Bełchatów Lignite Deposit, Poland)

“…The results obtained using the FEM analysis were more realistic than those from LEM because they did not require the failure surface to be pre-determined. The same methods were applied by Vanneschi et al [9] to two-dimensional stability analyses of a lignite open-pit mine affected by landslides in North Bohemia (Czech Republic). This work notes that the complementary use of both approaches is recommended for routine checks of model responses and the interpretation of the associated results.…”