Abstract
The presence of a weak layer has an adverse influence on the seismic performance of slopes. The upper-bound solution serves as a rigorous method in the stability analysis of geotechnical problems. In this study, a multi-rigid-block solution based on the category of the upper-bound theorem of limit analysis is presented to examine the seismic performance of nonhomogeneous slopes with a weak thin layer. Comparison of the static factors of safety is conducted with various solutions (i.e., limit analysis with a different failure mechanism, limit equilibrium solution, and numerical method), and the results exhibit reasonable consistency. An analytical solution in estimating the critical yield acceleration coefficient is derived, and the influence of slope angle, slope height, and soil strength on the critical yield acceleration coefficient and failure mechanism is analyzed. Subsequently, Newmark’s analytical procedure is employed to evaluate cumulative displacement with various real earthquake acceleration records as input motion. Results show that the strength and geometric parameters have a remarkable influence on the critical yield acceleration coefficient, and the cumulative displacement increases with the increasing slope angle.
Highlights
Extensive investigations have been conducted for the stability of slopes with homogeneous soil
Based on the upper-bound solution, a three-rigid-block acting as a “classroom example” is first presented, and a multi-rigid-block failure mechanism is further proposed
The results show that the failure slip is greatly deepened when the weak thin layer is inclined
Summary
Extensive investigations have been conducted for the stability of slopes with homogeneous soil. The factor of safety of a slope, estimated using a pseudostatic approach, and the cumulative displacement, determined by adopting Newmark’s sliding block method [5], are two commonly used tools to evaluate the seismic stability of slopes. The former provides a simple solution to evaluate the static stability (e.g., Seed et al [6], Seed [7], and Chen [8]). Newmark’s analytical approach is employed to assess the cumulative displacement by considering different real earthquake acceleration records as input motion
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