Abstract
The purpose of this study is to understand the mechanism of the effective shear strength for a soil mass in the presence of spatial variability. Random field finite element analyses are used to simulate spatial average shear strengths and effective (or overall) shear strengths that govern the failure of a soil mass. Based on the simulation results, it is found that the statistics of spatial average strengths can be estimated by Vanmarcke's theory as to be expected. However, the effective shear strength is found to be close to the average shear strength along the actual slip curve, rather than the spatial average shear strength over the entire soil mass.
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