3D Discretized Rotational Failure Mechanism for Slope Stability Analysis

Abstract The kinematical approach of limit analysis has been historically employed to assess slope stability in the geotechnical community, for which most three-dimensional (3D) failure mechanisms are generally based on a composite of multiple common geometrical bodies. Although these failure mechanisms are straightforward, they may not perform well for slopes that involve multilayered soils with heterogeneous shear strength parameters. This paper aims at proposing a new 3D failure mechanism for steep slopes using a spatial discretization technique. The proposed failure mechanism is composed of a large number of elemental blocks that are generated point by point obeying the kinematically admissible velocity field and the normality condition. The discretization scheme makes it possible to simplify the calculations of internal energy dissipations and external work rates on the failure mechanism when both the soil properties and external loadings are spatially changing. The performance of the proposed method is illustrated to examine the stability of steep slopes in homogeneous soils, multilayer soils, and spatially variable soils, showing good agreements with previously published results and numerical modelings.