Abstract:

The slope failure is a complicated process with the rock soil body’s slide, translation and rotation, which has uncontinuity in macroscopic view and randomness of a single block movement. It is unnecessary to assume position of slip surface and the shape on using particle flow code(PFC) to simulate the deformation and failure of soil slope; and particles adjust their position according to their contact forces received, and finally slope occur shearing failure from the weakest surface. Therefore, the discrete element method is comparatively ideal approach to simulate the mechanical behavior of side slope deformation and failure. The influences of microscopic parameters on slope failure’s forms of sandy slope and clay slope are analyzed respectively by PFC numerical simulation. The results reveal that the soil property greatly influences the form of soil slope failure; with the increase of the particle viscidity, the types of the slope failure transit from plastic failure to brittle failure.

Key words: side slope instability, particle flow code (PFC), discrete element method, numerical simulation, slope stability