Abstract
This paper presents a set of stability charts for the stability assessment of rock slopes that satisfy the Hoek–Brown (HB) criterion under various seismic loading conditions. The nonlinear Hoek–Brown strength reduction technique is used to conduct pseudostatic stability analysis of rock slopes subjected to horizontal seismic excitation. Based on an extensive parametric study, first, a set of stability charts with a slope angle of β = 45° under static and pseudostatic conditions are proposed by using ABAQUS 6.10 software. Second, the slope angle weighting factor (fβ) and the seismic weighting factor (fkh) are adopted to characterize the influence of slope angle (β) and horizontal seismic acceleration coefficient (kh) on the rock slope stability. Finally, the reliability of the proposed charts was validated by three typical examples and two case studies, and the results show that the values of the factor of safety (FOS) obtained from the proposed charts are consistent with the values from other methods. The proposed charts provide an efficient and convenient way to determine the FOS of rock slopes directly from the rock mass properties (γ and σci), the HB parameters (mi and GSI), the slope geometry (H and β), and the horizontal seismic coefficients (kh).
Highlights
In regions of high seismic intensity, earthquakes are a major cause of man-made and natural slope failures. erefore, conducting stability analyses of rock slopes subjected to the seismic conditions has been regarded as an important and difficult issue in civil and mining engineering
(2) Utilizing a simple methodology to locate the tangent of the Hoek–Brown envelope and introducing the instantaneous MC shear strength parameters make it possible to implement the nonlinear Hoek–Brown strength reduction technique by using ABAQUS 6.10 software
A set of stability charts is developed as shown in Figures 6 and 7 to determine the factor of safety (FOS) of rock slopes with slope angle β 45° and horizontal seismic coefficient kh ranging from 0.1 to 0.3. e FOS is observed to increase obviously with the increasing values of geological strength index (GSI) and SR
Summary
In regions of high seismic intensity, earthquakes are a major cause of man-made and natural slope failures. erefore, conducting stability analyses of rock slopes subjected to the seismic conditions has been regarded as an important and difficult issue in civil and mining engineering. Since Taylor [1] put forward a set of stability charts for soil slopes for the first time, many attempts have been made to develop such charts for rock or soil slopes, e.g., Gens et al [2], Baker [3], Li et al [4, 5], Michalowski [6, 7], Steward et al [8], Gao et al [9], Eid [10], and Sun et al [11] These charts are based on the commonly used Mohr-Coulomb (MC) failure criterion and need the shear strength parameters of cohesion c and internal friction angle φ for slope stability analysis. Since the HB failure criterion, originally presented by Hoek and Brown [16], reflects the nonlinear nature of the rock mass strength, it is currently one of the most commonly used failure criteria to predict the strength of intact rock (Group I) and rock masses with heavy joints or discontinuities (Group III), as shown in Figure 1. e latest version is the generalized Hoek–Brown (GHB) criterion proposed by Hoek et al [17] and is expressed as follows: Advances in Civil Engineering
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