Failure mechanism and causes of ergenekon landslide (Turkish republic of northern cyprus-trnc)

Abstract

The mechanism and causes of a landslide, which blocked a road to transportation and took place in 500 m NE of Ergenekon village of Serdarlı District located on the southern slopes of Beşparmak Mountain Range in Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, are investigated in this study. The failure surface was within the melange and resulted in buckling of the road up to 2 m. Different limiting equilibrium methods and discrete finite element method (DFEM) were used for the assessment of the slope instability. The factor of safety of the slope ranges between 1.22 and 1.26 when the slope is dry. The results showed that the slope failure may occur when the pore water pressure has a value ranging between 0.25 and 0.35. A failure surface, which is a combination of discontinuities with tectonic origin, was assumed for the stability assessment of the slope by using a pseudo-dynamic version of DFEM and the results indicated that the slope becomes unstable when pore water pressure in the slope forming material becomes 0.4. © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, London.