Abstract

This paper develops an effective method for a probabilistic analysis of earthen slopes. Typically, the safety of a slope is assessed in terms of a factor of safety based on deterministic methods. However, these methods are unable to handle the uncertainties in the stability analysis. Therefore, the probabilistic approach is used for analyzing the safety of slopes, which is capable to take into account the uncertainties. In this study, for slope safety assessment, the reliability index defined by Hasofer and Lind is employed for estimating the reliability index or probability of failure. The performance function formulated by Spencer’s method for general shape of slip surface. To calculate the minimum reliability index and corresponding critical probabilistic slip surface a modified particle swarm optimization is introduced. By this method, reliability of the nonlinear and complex performance function can be evaluated without derivation. The applicability and efficiency of the proposed algorithm are examined by considering a number of published cases and the results indicate the successful working of the new method.

Key words: Particle swarm optimization, slope stability, probabilistic analysis, uncertainty.