Reply to the discussion by V.R. Greco on "An efficient search method for finding the critical circular slip surface using the Monte Carlo technique"

Abstract

The authors would like to thank the discusser for showing interest and providing valuable comments on the paper. In the proposed method the authors showed that an average of 1500–2000 examined potential slip surfaces would be adequate to locate the critical slip surface. On the other hand, the support of the random jumping technique of two to three times after each random walking minimization stage will confirm the gullibility of the located critical slip surface. The difference in the numbers of the testing slip surfaces will be more significant if more advanced analyses methods are used rather than Bishop’s method. Two principles were suggested to locate point O, which represents the center of the critical slip surface at a certain stage, along segment ED in Fig. D1. The difference between these two options is similar to the difference between the grid method and the authors’ proposed method. The first method can be performed by examining all of the points between E and D and fixing the one giving the mini-