Reliability of spatially variable soil slope based on nonlinear failure criterion

The reliability analysis of slope under the nonlinear failure criterion is investigated in this paper. The two-dimensional random fields are generated by using Karhunen–Loève (KL) expansion method. Based on the generated random fields, the simplified Bishop’s method with nonlinear failure criterion is used to calculate the factor of safety. Then, Monte Carlo simulation is used to estimate the reliability of slope. Example analyses are carried out to verify the presented method. The effect of the nonlinearity coefficient m on the failure probability of slope is investigated in this paper. The results show that the failure probability obtained by using the nonlinear failure criterion is higher than that calculated by using linear Mohr–Coulomb criterion.