Abstract:

The upper bound limit analysis approach, which is based on the upper bound theorem, is one of the familiar methods for slope stability problems. The key of the approach is the construction of kinematically admission failure pattern. According to the Mohr-Coulomb’s yield criterion and its associative flow rule, a novel slope stability analysis method is presented. In the method, the collapse mechanism is assumed to be in the form of rigid blocks analogous to slices in traditional slice methods and takes the translational and rotational velocities of slice into account at the same time. The purely translational and purely rotational velocity fields are two special cases of the presented mechanism of failure. Numerical examples illustrate that the proposed approach gives lower factor of safety than the purely translational one, and the results are also compared with those given by the conventional limit equilibrium method.