Abstract
The issue of slope stability is one of the most important and yet most difficult geotechnical problems. Assessing slope stability is particularly difficult because of the many uncertainties involved in the process. To take these uncertainties into account, probabilistic methods are used, and the reliability approach is adopted. There are many methods for reliability assessment of earth slope stability. However, there is no system that would organize all of these methods in an unambiguous way. In fact, these methods can be classified in different ways: by assignment to a deterministic classification of methods, by description of uncertainties of soil parameters, by level of reliability according to the theory of reliability, etc. The huge number of articles summarizing the research in this field, but in various “disordered” directions, certainly do not facilitate the understanding or ultimately the practical application of the reliability approach by the engineer. The paper proposes a universal classification system of reliability methods for evaluating the stability of earth slopes. This proposal is preceded by a brief literature review of both historical background and contemporary research on reliability analysis of earth slope stability.
Highlights
The assessment of slope stability in terms of reliability analysis is still an active research topic being investigated by many scientific centres around the world
This paper proposes a classification system of reliability methods for earth slope stability assessment that integrates deterministic slope stability methods, modelling of uncertain soil parameters and reliability level
Li et al [127] used equivalent homogeneous random soil parameters in the form of single random variables applied to the RFDM, whereas Liu et al [128] utilised a simplified framework based on the multiple response surface method (MRSM) and Monte Carlo simulation
Summary
The assessment of slope stability in terms of reliability analysis is still an active research topic being investigated by many scientific centres around the world. It seems obvious that it should be systematised, because even for most researchers specialising in this subject, the quantity of disordered information can lead to confusion and possibly even incorrect conclusions Such a collection still would not give the engineer a universal tool for work. A brief overview of earth slope stability reliability approaches starting from the historical background and moving to contemporary research is presented in this paper In the latter, apart from the methods of analysis, particular attention is paid to the issues developed in the last dozen or so years such as system reliability and description of random soil properties, especially spatial variability. In the case of the most sophisticated approaches, further divisions related to improvement of computation efficiency are suggested
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