Seismic stability analysis of heterogeneous slopes reinforced by inclined soil nails

Abstract

This study aims to propose an effective approach to evaluate the seismic stability of heterogeneous slopes reinforced by inclined soil nails. The modified pseudo dynamic approach is applied to properly describe the characteristics of seismic loads with time and space. The discretization-based failure mechanism generated from the slope crest is divided horizontally into many blocks to incorporate the heterogeneous soil properties and depth-dependent seismic accelerations into the analysis of the stability issue. The critical seismic acceleration coefficient is then determined to assess the slope stability using the kinematic approach of limit analysis. The proposed method is validated by comparisons with existing solutions and numerical results for some available cases. A systematic parametric analysis is conducted to discuss the effects of model parameters on the slope stability. Results show that there exist optimal relative nail lengths and optimal incline angles of soil nails to obtain the maximum critical seismic acceleration coefficient for reinforced slopes. Finally, an application of the proposed model to spatially variable soil strength properties is performed to illustrate that the proposed method has the potential to serve as a benchmark for the slope stability under complex geological conditions.