A New Closure to Slice Model for Slope Stability Analysis

Tianyun Liu, Yunling Duan, Chongbin Zhao

Computational Geosciences Research Centre, Central South University, Changsha, China.
State Key Laboratory of Hydro-Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.

DOI: 10.4236/eng.2012.47052                

Abstract

This paper presents a new closure to slice models for evaluating slopes. The discussion is based on the minimal inter-slice action (MIA) hypothesis, which results in a new slice model without including artificially adjustable parameters. It has been realized that the new slice model predicts the minimum value of the safety factor, while all other slice models available always overestimate the value of the safety factor. Moreover, the gravity moment of each slice is found to be opposite to the overturning moment, which is different from the existing knowledge. In particular, the new slice model overcomes the situation where different assumptions of the inter-slice force function will give different safety factors to the same slope. The related numerical examples indicate that the new slice model can serve as a reliable tool for investigating geotechnical slope stability.

Keywords

Slope Stability; Slice Model; Limit Equilibrium; Safety Factor; Minimal Inter-Slice Action;

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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