Saeed Tourchi , Marco Loche , Gianvito Scaringi 

This paper presents experimental and numerical investigations regarding the effect of temperature on the residual strength of Bentonite at slow-to-moderate shearing velocities. In order to understand the trigger mechanism of slow-moving landslides, we investigated the effect of temperature on the shear strength of slip surfaces. We performed ring-shear tests on Bentonite samples at various temperatures and rates. The test results show that the residual shear strength of Bentonite is both rate and temperature dependent. Under relatively slow shearing rates, strength was gained as temperature increased; in contrast, under relatively high shearing rates, strength was decreased as temperature increased. A non-isothermal viscoplastic model is proposed to simulate the observed behaviour of a ring- shear samples of Bentonite subjected to drained heating under residual conditions. The developed model was implemented in finite element computer code for THM analysis of porous media, and experimental results were numerically simulated.