Effects of shear strength reduction strategies on safety factor of homogeneous slope based on a general nonlinear failure criterion

摘要

Safety factor of slope is often calculated based on the conventional linear Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion. However, many experimental results show that the strength envelopes of almost all of geomaterials are characteristically nonlinear. This paper presents a method (upper bound limit analysis method) to analyze the stability of a homogeneous slope based on a general nonlinear failure criterion, in which different shear strength reduction strategies (SSRS) can be used. Based on the presented method, three SSRSs (i.e. by factoring the unconfined shear strength c_0 only, by factoring the tensile strength σ_t only, by factoring both the unconfined shear strength c_0 and the tensile strength σ_t) are used to calculate the safety factors of a homogeneous slope under a general nonlinear failure criterion. Compared results show different SSRSs have significant influence on the calculated safety factor.