Abstract
The discrete element method (DEM) is commonly employed to analyze the deformations and failures of jointed rock slopes. However, when the iterative calculation process of the DEM modeling should be terminated is still unclear. To solve the above problem, in this paper, a discrete element modeling method based on the energy correlation coefficient is proposed to determine when the iterative calculation process could be terminated, and then applied the proposed method to analyze the deformations and failures of jointed rock slopes. Compared with the existing discrete element modeling method based on the displacement variation coefficient, the proposed method based on the energy correlation coefficient is much more applicable for jointed rock slopes. The main advantage of the proposed method is that there is no need to determine the position of the potential sliding surface, and the displacements of all blocks are no longer counted as statistics, but the spatiotemporal correlations between all blocks are considered. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by comparing with the existing method based on the displacement variation coefficient for an abbreviated jointed rock slope. Moreover, the proposed method is successfully applied to analyze a real-world jointed rock slope without an obvious potential sliding surface in which the existing method cannot work.
Highlights
The problem associated with the deformations and failures of slopes has long attracted the attention of those in geotechnical engineering fields [1]
The energy under gravity and the correlation coefficient are calculated corresponding to each iteration step, so as to draw a curve about the relationship between the correlation coefficient and the number of iterations; the number of calculation steps is determined for termination by analyzing the convergence of the curve
Since the method based on displacement statistics needs to determine the potential sliding surface before the discrete element calculation, it is only suitable for jointed rock slopes that the position of the potential sliding surface is liable to determination
Summary
The problem associated with the deformations and failures of slopes has long attracted the attention of those in geotechnical engineering fields [1]. To the current numerical simulation methods, numerical calculation methods have been widely adopted to investigate the deformations and failures of slopes. The FEM is the most commonly used method for calculating factors of safety, but it could not be used to reflect the characteristics of structural planes in rock masses, nor is it suitable for modeling large deformations of slopes such as landslides. The interaction of the boundaries between blocks in the DEM could reflect the discontinuity of rock masses and the characteristics of joints. DEM is widely used to numerically model mechanical processes such as landslides and rockfall in jointed rock masses, regardless of many blocks or only several blocks being moved
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