Sustainable design of slopes under earthquake conditions

Abstract

The consideration of sustainability is very important for the stability assessment of geotechnical structures, including the slopes subjected to the seismic loads. Most seismic stability analyses of the slopes are performed to evaluate the factor of safety by following the conventional deterministic methods where the horizontal earthquake loadings are applied as inertia force to the centre of gravity of sliding mass of the slope. In the past, limited importance has been given to the effect of vertical seismic loading, although it may affect greatly the factor of safety as well as the performance of the slope.