مهندسی عمران شریف (Feb 2018)
A NEW APPROACH FOR STABILITY ANALYSIS OF SOIL SLOPES USING A LIMIT EQUILIBRIUM METHOD
Abstract
Slope stability analysis is used in a wide variety of geotechnical engineering problems such as embankments, road cuts, open-pit mining, excavations, canals, landfills, etc. The limit equilibrium method is the most popular approach in slope stability analyses. In this study, a new limit equilibrium method is proposed that can satisfy the forces and moment without any assumptions. In this method, circular or non-circular slip surface has been considered and slices are intended along the radius of the slip surface. Innovation of this research is in the form of slices in circle sector which could eliminate the common simplifying assumptions in the equilibrium equations. The forces and moment equilibrium equations have been applied without any simplifying assumptions and expected that this method can achieve lower error in determining the safety factor. In order to calculate the safety factor using the proposed method, a numerical model has been developed. In this model, the soil slope characteristics such as slope geometry, soil strength properties, seismic coefficient and also water level are considered as input. Then sliding wedge is introduced and on the basis of number of divisions that the user defines, sliding wedge is discretized. In the next step, the coordinates of each node of these slices are determined. To compute the safety factor, a process should be taken that satisfies the force and moment equilibrium equations simultaneously. To achieve this goal, the iterative method (trial and error) is used in this study. In order to evaluate the proposed method and the efficiency of the developed model, several tests with different conditions are solved. The mentioned test results are in good agreement with the results of other methods that satisfy all of the equilibrium equations.
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