Application of Spectral Element Method (SEM) in Slope Instability Analysis

Abstract

Spectral element framework for slope instability analysis includes Spectral Element Method (SEM) formulation, system requirements for serial and parallel computations, model preparation with hexahedral meshing in Cubit or Trelis, meshing and mapping technique (h- and p-refinement techniques) according to SEM, applying boundary conditions for 2D and 3D, defining inputs for material model, ground water table, seismic loading as well as processing and visualizing the results in Tecplot and ParaView. Within this framework, the safety factor in slope stability is computed and visualized with greater spectral accuracy and stability.