Abstract
The stability of natural rock slopes is influenced by a wide spectrum of factors, such as mechanical properties of bedrocks and spatial distribution of discontinuities. Their specific values are typically incomplete, due mainly to the lack of effective and comprehensive methods to accurately characterize these factors, especially those inside of the slopes. The neutrosophic number is a useful tool to solve problems in indeterminate environment. This study introduces the neutrosophic theory into slope stability assessment. A vector similarity measure developed under neutrosophic environment was employed to establish a stability assessment method considering multilevel attributes of slopes. Using this method, the level of stability for studied slopes, i.e., stable, mostly stable, less stable, and instable, was determined by computing the relation indices. The method was applied to a group of rock slopes located in Zhejiang province, China, and the calculated results were compared with the reality of in situ survey. The field application showed that the developed method has a good efficiency and precision in assessing the stability of rock slopes. The obtained weight vector can reveal the key influential parameters that inherently control the stability of rock slopes.
Highlights
Rock slope failures are a typical type of geological hazard that feature large scale and serious damage, frequently occurring in mountainous regions
It is considered that this discrepancy was yielded due to the incomplete and imprecise information being used in the estimation, which again suggested the necessity of the introduction of probabilistic methods to slope stability assessments
The present study developed a vector similarity measure under neutrosophic number environment for rock slope stability assessments with multiple levels of attributes
Summary
Rock slope failures are a typical type of geological hazard that feature large scale and serious damage, frequently occurring in mountainous regions. Rock slopes can be considered as a complex system that consists in random, discrete, and nonlinear information, such as the characteristics of geological structures, geomorphic types, and environmental impacts [1,2,3]. For the better protection of civil engineering, environmental conservation, and efficient operation, the assessment of rock slope stability has always been a challenging topic in the world. In the past several decades, different approaches have been developed to assess the stability of rock slopes, which can be primarily categorized into deterministic and probabilistic methods. Limit equilibrium and numerical analysis are the most common forms of deterministic method.
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