Geotechnical system reliability of slopes

Chowdhury, Robin; Xu, Dongwei

doi:10.1016/0951-8320(94)00063-t

Cited by 145 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…The results compare well with the failure bounds obtained by Chowdhury & Xu (1995) of [0·27389, 0·44733]. They employed a similar approach to calculate the bimodal system bounds, but obtained their critical slip surfaces by performing multiple deterministic analyses using the conjugate gradient method.…”

Section: Case Study 2: Multi-layered Embankmentsupporting

confidence: 72%

“…Case study 3: Congress St Cut, Chicago The Congress St Cut, Chicago cutting failure originally reported by Ireland (1954), has been extensively used as a validation case study in the literature (Oka & Wu, 1990;Chowdhury & Xu, 1995;Liang et al, 1999, among others). The approximate profile of the cut is presented in Fig.…”

Section: Case Study 2: Multi-layered Embankmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although a range of uncertainties exist when designing new slopes or in the evaluation of existing slopes, the principal uncertainty which concerns geotechnical engineers when evaluating slope stability involves quantifying the strength (and shear resistance) of the different soil layers. Owing to the extreme variability in most natural and man-made slopes, this uncertainty cannot be eliminated, or even reduced considerably, without unreasonable cost (Chowdhury & Xu, 1995).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A polar co-ordinate defined search space is used instead of the more traditional Cartesian co-ordinate system, as this has been shown to be less sensitive to local discontinuities on the limit state surface (Val et al, 1996). As most slopes have multiple viable slip surfaces, the overall failure probability of the slope as a system should be evaluated, not just that of the critical failure surface; the probability of failure of the critical failure surface may be significantly less than that of the slope as a whole (Oka & Wu, 1990;Chowdhury & Xu, 1995;Huang et al, 2010;Zhang et al, 2011;Ji & Low, 2012). Therefore, this paper considers the correlation between different viable slip surfaces and uses that correlation to determine upper and lower bounds for the system's probability of failure.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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System reliability of slopes using multimodal optimisation

2016

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Many engineered and natural slopes have complex geometries and are multi-layered. For these slopes traditional stability analyses will tend to predict critical failure surfaces in layers with the lowest mean strength. A move toward probabilistic analyses allows a designer to account for uncertainties with respect to input parameters that allow for a more complete understanding of risk. Railway slopes, which in some cases were built more than 150 years ago, form important assets on the European rail network. Many of these structures were built at slope angles significantly higher than those allowed in modern design codes. Depending on the local geotechnical conditions these slopes may be susceptible to deepseated failure; however, a significant number of failures each year occur as shallow translational slips that develop during periods of high rainfall. Thus, for a given slope, two potential failure mechanisms might exist with very similar probabilities of failure. In this paper a novel multimodal optimisation algorithm ('Slips') that is capable of detecting all feasible probabilistic slip surfaces simultaneously is presented. The system reliability analysis is applied using polar co-ordinates, as this approach has been shown to be less sensitive to local numerical instabilities, which can develop due to discontinuities on the limit state surface. The approach is applied to two example slopes where the complexity in terms of stratification and slope geometry is varied. In addition the methodology is validated using a real-life case study involving failure of a complex slope.

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Section: Case Study 2: Multi-layered Embankmentsupporting

confidence: 72%

Section: Case Study 2: Multi-layered Embankmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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System reliability of slopes using multimodal optimisation

2016

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“…Christian et al 1994;Chowdhury & Xu 1995;Duncan 2000). A key question to be addressed in this paper is: under what circumstances will the probability of failure of a slope predicted by a full three-dimensional analysis be higher than that obtained from an equivalent two-dimensional analysis?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the reliability of earth slopes in three dimensions

2009

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The paper investigates the probability of failure of two-dimensional and three-dimensional slopes using the random finite-element method (RFEM). In this context, RFEM combines elastoplastic finite-element algorithms with random field theory in a Monte Carlo framework. Full account is taken of local averaging and variance reduction over each element, and an exponentially decaying (Markov) spatial correlation function is incorporated. It is found that two-dimensional probabilistic analysis, which implicitly assumes perfect spatial correlation in the out-of-plane direction, may underestimate the probability of failure of slopes.

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Multiple response surfaces for slope reliability analysis

Chu

2014

Num Anal Meth Geomechanics

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This paper develops a multiple response surfaces approach to approximate the limit state function for slope failure by second-order polynomial functions, to incorporate the variation of the most probable slip surfaces, and to evaluate the slope failure probability p f . The proposed methodology was illustrated through a cohesive soil slope example. It is shown that the p f values estimated from multiple response surfaces agree well with those p f values that have been obtained by searching a large number of potential slip surfaces in each Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) sample.The variation of number of the most probable slip surfaces is studied at different scale of fluctuation (λ) values. It is found that when full correlation assumed for each of random fields (i.e., spatial variability is ignored), the number of the most probable slip surfaces is equal to the number of random fields (in this study, it is 3). When the spatial variability grows significantly, the number of the most probable slip surfaces or number of multiple response surfaces firstly increases evidently to a higher value and then varies slightly. In addition, the contribution of a specific most probable slip surface varies dramatically at different spatial variability level, and therefore, the variation of the most probable slip surfaces should be accounted for in the reliability analysis. The multiple response surfaces approach developed in this paper provides a limit equilibrium method and MCS-based means to incorporate such a variation of the most probable slip surfaces in slope reliability analysis.

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Geotechnical system reliability of slopes

Cited by 145 publications

References 7 publications

System reliability of slopes using multimodal optimisation

System reliability of slopes using multimodal optimisation

On the reliability of earth slopes in three dimensions

Multiple response surfaces for slope reliability analysis

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