The Influences of Destruction Effects of Earthquake Faults on the Dynamic Stability of Highway Slopes

Abstract

In highway projects, the common destruction effects of earthquake faults include the sand seismic liquefaction, the instability and failure of slopes. Thereinto, the dynamic instability of slopes induced by earthquake faults is most commonly seen. In order to research the influences of the destruction effects of earthquake faults on the dynamic stability of highway slopes, the distribution of previous earthquakes happening in the research area is qualitatively analyzed to establish the earthquake fault model and explore the kinematic characteristics. On this basis, representative slopes–cutting slopes in seismic damage areas are selected to calculate their earthquake response using the ABAQUS finite element program. The displacement field and acceleration output from the program are used to analyze the variation in the displacement of slope top and calculate the distribution coefficient of acceleration. Then, the stress fields output by the dynamic finite element analysis (FEA) are substituted in the genetic algorithm programmed by MATLAB to obtain the time history curves of safety factor of slopes and intelligently search the critical slip surfaces. By doing so, the changing rule of safety factor with seismic acceleration is obtained, together with the range of the safety factor of the envelope diagram of critical slip surfaces.