Applied Geoinformatics for Society and Environment (AGSE), AGSE 2009

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Deformation Analysis of a Landslide using Continuum Mechanics and Interpolation Methods

Paul Rawiel

Last modified: 2009-06-25

Abstract


One important topic in surveying is the monitoring and analysis of deformations of different kinds of objects, such as buildings, industrial constructions or geological structures like rocks, glaciers and landslides. Especially geology, hydrology, geodesy, geotechnical and mechanical engineering are cooperating concerning triggering effects, dynamic models, disaster prediction and technical countermeasures. One important interface between mechanics and geodesy is the interaction between dynamic models for an object under influence of physical interactions and the motion or deformation pattern coming from geodetic measurements, which can be used to develop, adjust or tune the model. Geodetic measurements usually are done to individual discrete points that represent the object to be analyzed. Usually the deformation analysis is then based on the movements of several single points without considering the moving object as a continuum. The paper presents a method to interpolate a continuum out of the single point measurements that allows the calculation of deformations in the infinitesimal surrounding of any point of the object at any time. This paper presents the results for a project in the Austrian Alps, where a land slide caused damages to buildings near a ski slope.

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