Landslides involving sensitive clays are recurrent events in the world's northern regions and are especially notorious in eastern Canada. The two critical factors that separate sensitive clay landslides from traditional slope stability analysis are the highly brittle behavior in undrained conditions (strain-softening) characteristic of progressive or retrogressive failures and the large deformations associated with them. Conventional limit equilibrium analysis has numerous shortcomings in incorporating these characteristics when assessing landslides in sensitive clays. This paper presents an extensive literature review of the failure mechanics characteristics of landslides in sensitive clays and the existing constitutive models and numerical tools to analyze such slopes' stability and post-failure behavior. The advantages and shortcomings of the different techniques to incorporate strain-softening and large deformation in the numerical modeling of sensitive clay landslides are assessed. The literature review depicts that elastoviscoplastic soil models with non-linear strain-softening laws and rate effects represent the material behavior of sensitive clays. Though several numerical models have been proposed to analyze post-failure runouts, the amount of work performed in line with sensitive clay landslides is very scarce. That creates an urgent need to apply and further develop advanced numerical tools for better understanding and predicting these catastrophic events.

中文翻译：

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敏感粘土滑坡的破坏机制、现有本构模型和数值模拟：综述

涉及敏感粘土的滑坡是世界北部地区经常发生的事件，在加拿大东部尤其臭名昭著。将敏感粘土滑坡与传统边坡稳定性分析区分开来的两个关键因素是在不排水条件下的高度脆性行为（应变软化），渐进式或倒退式破坏的特征以及与之相关的大变形。在评估敏感粘土中的滑坡时，传统的极限平衡分析在结合这些特征方面存在许多缺点。本文对敏感粘土中滑坡的破坏力学特征以及现有的本构模型和数值工具进行了广泛的文献回顾，以分析此类斜坡的稳定性和破坏后的行为。评估了将应变软化和大变形纳入敏感粘土滑坡数值模拟的不同技术的优缺点。文献综述描述了具有非线性应变软化定律和速率效应的弹粘塑性土壤模型代表了敏感粘土的材料行为。虽然已经提出了几种数值模型来分析故障后的跳动，但根据敏感的粘土滑坡进行的工作量非常少。这就迫切需要应用和进一步开发先进的数值工具，以更好地理解和预测这些灾难性事件。文献综述描述了具有非线性应变软化定律和速率效应的弹粘塑性土壤模型代表了敏感粘土的材料行为。尽管已经提出了几种数值模型来分析故障后的跳动，但根据敏感的粘土滑坡进行的工作量非常少。这就迫切需要应用和进一步开发先进的数值工具，以更好地理解和预测这些灾难性事件。文献综述描述了具有非线性应变软化定律和速率效应的弹粘塑性土壤模型代表了敏感粘土的材料行为。虽然已经提出了几种数值模型来分析故障后的跳动，但根据敏感的粘土滑坡进行的工作量非常少。这就迫切需要应用和进一步开发先进的数值工具，以更好地理解和预测这些灾难性事件。