Effect of Surcharge on the Stability of Rock Slope under Complex Conditions

Abstract

In this paper, a general analytical expression for the factor of safety of the rock slope against plane failure is proposed, incorporating most of the practically occurring under complex conditions such as depth of tension crack, depth of water in tension crack, seismic loads and surcharge. Several special cases of this expression are established, which can be found similarly to those reported in the literature. A detailed parametric analysis is presented to study the effect of surcharge on the stability of the rock slope for practical ranges of main parameters such as depth of tension crack, depth of water in tension crack, the horizontal seismic coefficient and the vertical seismic coefficient. The parametric analysis has shown that the factor of safety of the rock slope decreases with increase in surcharge for the range of those parameters in this paper. It is also shown that the horizontal seismic coefficient is the most important factor which effects on the factor of safety in the above four influence factors. The general analytical expression proposed in this paper and the results of the parametric analysis can be used to carry out a quantitative assessment of the stability of the rock slopes by engineers and researchers.