Ultimate loads on buildings in landslides

Existing buildings embedded in permanently moving landslides often exhibit significant damage. This damage is mostly caused by excessive loads acting on the building due to relative displacements of the landslide. For buildings in the compression zone of a landslide, the existing classical earth pressure and landslide pressure solutions are not capable of describing the loads adequately. In this paper it is shown that accumulated loads acting on a building eventually lead first to a local limit state with failure in the vicinity of the building, followed by a global limit state where the whole sliding body reaches failure. Both limit states are analysed by means of limit analysis, resulting in analytical solutions for the ultimate loads for general cases, and the finite-element method, resulting in the loading history for particular cases. The derived solutions are practically applicable for the assessment and potential retrofitting of existing buildings as well as for the design of new ones, possibly preventing future damage.