Abstract
Strength reduction finite element method (SRFEM) has been widely used to analyze the slope stability. Strength Reduction Factor (SRF) is yielded as the slope Factor Of Safety (FOS) when a running-though shear failure zone comes into being, in which the Plastic Element EQuivalent strain (PEEQ) is employed as the judgment of shear failure initiation in this paper. Moreover, the filed variable is set as same as SRF along the solution processing, FOS can be directly determined as the cor-responding value of field variable when the shear failure zone goes through. Three typical slopes with varying foot gradients of 26.6, 45 and 78.7 in degree are analyzed and fantastic results have been yielded, well agreeing with the Spencer’s results, when the linear Mohr-coulomb failure criterion is employed. However, during the solution process, tensile failure zone initiates at the slope top while the plastic failure zone initiates at the slope toe and this indicates that the failure mode of slope is combined. The results show that the combined failure zone with plastic failure and tensile failure appears much earlier than the unique plastic failure zone, which indicates that the traditional analytic method and SRFEM based on the unique linear Mohr-coulomb plasticity criteria overestimated the slope stability factor.
Highlights
Limit equilibrium methods are widely employed to analyze slope stability with the simple computation, which have a long history and abundant using experience
As finite element method (FEM) can meet static equilibrium equation and strain compatibility, it represents an alternative approach for slope stability analysis without assuming the shape or location of the failure surface and slice side forces and it has become very popular for evaluating slope stability in which the linear Mohr–Coulomb failure criterion was often used [1 - 6]
To find the exact Factor of Safety (FOS), it is necessary to initiate a systematic search for the Strength Reduction Factor (SRF) value that will just cause the slope failure, and FOS is determined as the corresponding SRF value, FOS=SRF
Summary
Limit equilibrium methods are widely employed to analyze slope stability with the simple computation, which have a long history and abundant using experience. The experimental results show that the strength envelopes of almost all geo-materials are characteristically nonlinear [7 - 12] and that the linear failure criterion is a special case of nonlinear failure criteria. Most of these nonlinear failure methods are relative complicated procedure, walking farer way from the simple computation [8, 12 - 15]. In our paper a simple combined failure criterion with linear Mohr–Coulomb failure criterion and maximum principal tensile stress criterion are employed to determine the slope failure upon the shear failure zone and tensile failure zone
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