A relation between safety factors with respect to strength and height of slopes

✍ Scribed by R. Baker

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 166 KB
• Volume: 33
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0266-352X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.compgeo.2006.07.001

✦ Synopsis

Conventional slope stability analysis is usually based on the linear Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion utilizing the notion of safety factors with respect to shear strength, and one of the available slice methods. Failure criteria of most soils are not linear, and it is possible to show that this non-linearity has a very significant effect on calculated safety factors. The present work is based on a non-linear failure criterion, which appears to fit the experimental information better than Mohr-Coulomb. All slice methods utilize various kinematical and static assumptions, which cannot be rationally justified. The present work is based on rigorous variational approach to slope stability analysis, which does not employ any kinematical and static assumptions. Safety factors with respect to shear strength are useful abstractions, but physical significance of results based on them is clear only at failure when they are equal to 1 (at any other value of the safety factor with respect to strength results of the analysis correspond to fictitious material with a modified shear strength function). In the present note, we use the variational analysis in order to establish a simple analytical relation between safety factors with respect to strength and height. These two safety factors provide alternative measures for the stability of a given slope; but the safety factor with respect to height appears to have clearer physical interpretation.