Abstract
Flexural toppling is one of the failure modes of anti-dip rocks, is often triggered by seismic load, occurs haphazardly under an earthquake scenario, and is characterized by high speed and extreme energy, leading to catastrophic disaster consequences and huge losses. However, there is limited literature that reveals its failure mechanisms and describes the failure surface due to earthquakes. Therefore, based on the limit equilibrium analysis method, the horizontal pseudo-static load was applied to improve the geological mechanical model under gravity only, and the stability analysis process was derived. The failure surface and failure mode of the slope under different seismic loads were analyzed. The results indicated that, with the increasing seismic load, an increase in the number of rock layers with sliding failure increased the number of rock layers with cantilever toppling failure; in contrast, the number of rock layers with overlapping toppling failure decreased. The slope toe was more prone to sliding and the slope top was more prone to cantilever toppling under an earthquake, which decreased the stability of the anti-dip rock slope.
Highlights
An anti-dip rock slope (Zuo et al, 2005) is a common geological feature worldwide, existing in mountainous areas, and along engineered slopes such as highways, railways, water and hydropower stations, and mining projects
This study introduced pseudo-seismic load to it to investigate the flexural toppling failure under an earthquake scenario
To simplify the mechanical analysis of flexural toppling failure in slope, the following assumptions were proposed based on the mechanism of flexural toppling failure: FIGURE 4 | Limit equilibrium analysis of rock mass shear failure below stratum layer #i under horizontal pseudo-static load
Summary
An anti-dip rock slope (Zuo et al, 2005) is a common geological feature worldwide, existing in mountainous areas, and along engineered slopes such as highways, railways, water and hydropower stations, and mining projects. Yang et al (2012) and Feng et al (2019) performed shaking table tests to investigate the dynamic response of the anti-dip slope model, considering the strata, and the structural joints. Ning et al (2019) and Liu et al (2021) studied block-flexural toppling on anti-dip rock slopes under seismic load using UDEC and FLAC, respectively, by analyzing the failure mode process for a prototype slope of the corresponding large shaking table test. The height of any rock on the failure surface is: FIGURE 3 | Limit equilibrium analysis of rock mass (A) Diagram of sliding failure in stratum layer; (B) Diagram of toppling failure, #1 at slope toe under horizontal pseudo-static load.
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