Abstract
In order to study the failure mechanism and assess the stability of the inlet slope of the outlet structure of Lianghekou Hydropower station, the strength reduction method considering the ubiquitous joint model is proposed. Firstly, two-dimension numerical models are built to investigate the influence of the dilation angle of ubiquitous joints, mesh discretization, and solution domain size on the slope stability. It is found that the factor of safety is insensitive to the dilation angle of ubiquitous joints and the solution domain size but sensitive to the mesh discretization when the number of elements less than a certain threshold. Then, a complex three-dimension numerical model is built to assess the stability of the inlet slope of the outlet structure of Lianghekou Hydropower station. During the strength reduction procedure, the progressive failure process and the final failure surface of the slope are obtained. Furthermore, the comparison of factors of safety obtained from strength reduction method and analytical solutions indicates that the effect of vertical side boundaries plays an important role in the stability of jointed rock slope, and the cohesive force is the main contribution to the resistant force of vertical side boundaries.
Highlights
In order to study the failure mechanism and assess the stability of the inlet slope of the outlet structure of Lianghekou Hydropower station, the strength reduction method considering the ubiquitous joint model is proposed
It is found that the factor of safety is insensitive to the dilation angle of ubiquitous joints and the solution domain size but sensitive to the mesh discretization when the number of elements less than a certain threshold. en, a complex three-dimension numerical model is built to assess the stability of the inlet slope of the outlet structure of Lianghekou Hydropower station
The comparison of factors of safety obtained from strength reduction method and analytical solutions indicates that the effect of vertical side boundaries plays an important role in the stability of jointed rock slope, and the cohesive force is the main contribution to the resistant force of vertical side boundaries
Summary
Received 4 August 2020; Revised 22 September 2020; Accepted 5 October 2020; Published 2 November 2020. In order to study the failure mechanism and assess the stability of the inlet slope of the outlet structure of Lianghekou Hydropower station, the strength reduction method considering the ubiquitous joint model is proposed. Two-dimension numerical models are built to investigate the influence of the dilation angle of ubiquitous joints, mesh discretization, and solution domain size on the slope stability. The limit equilibrium method (LEM) is widely used by engineers and researchers. Erefore, many researchers improved a number of 3D limit equilibrium methods for slope stability analysis based on extensions of corresponding methods [3, 15,16,17,18,19,20,21], which are beneficial for stability assessment of slope with complex failure surfaces. Cheng et al [28] compared SRM with LEM and found that generally, the two methods will give a similar factor of safety (FOS)
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