Study on toppling deformation of anti-dip slope in centrifuge test based on energy field

Traditional indexes like stress, strain, and displacement can only represent local scale evolutionary characteristics of toppling deformation. The energy can represent not only the deformation characteristics of the small area, but also the large area. It will be suitable to use energy as an indicator to study the toppling deformation characteristic of the anti-dip slope. In this paper, the Particle Flow Code was used to reproduce a classic anti-dip slope centrifuge test, and the verification of the numerical model was carried out by comparing the simulated horizontal displacement and fracture surface to that in original test and another numerical method. Then, special effort was made to utilize kinetic energy, friction energy, and strain energy as indicators to study toppling deformation characteristics. The changing trend of kinetic energy corresponds well with the slope instability process; the gravity loading process will increase the friction energy and improve the stability of the model; the strain energy is closely related to the appearance of cracks. Influences on toppling deformation from features like tensile strength of rock column, joint spacing, and joint angle are also investigated. Higher tensile strength of course will improve the slope stability. But too thin joint spacing may also improve the stability of the anti-dip slope for more friction surface resisting deformation. And too steep joints which are close to upright also restrain the toppling deformation.