Stability Analysis of Reinforced Slopes Using Upper Bound Limit Analysis Method

The kinematic method of limit analysis approach is applied to study stability of reinforced slopes. The amount and length of reinforcement required to prevent the slope to collapse are determined based on different mechanisms. A new method consisting of horizontal blocks is used in translational mechanism. The failure wedge is divided into a number of horizontal slices involving reinforcements. The reinforcements do not intersect the slices. Thus, they have no direct influence on the inter-slice forces. The presented method can reduce difficulties of stability analysis for reinforced slopes. In this paper, the seismic stability of slopes reinforced with geosynthetics is investigated. The seismic analysis procedure is substituted with pseudo-static horizontal forces. While such an approach ignores the acceleration history of a structure, it is routinely used in practice. It has been assumed that the geosynthetics are uniformly distributed in the height of slope. Based on these assumptions, different possible failure mechanisms are considered and necessary analytical expressions for determining the design parameters are derived for each mechanism. The results of these analyses are presented to illustrate the influence of different parameters such as geometrical parameters of slopes, soil characteristics, and seismic forces on the stability of reinforced earth structures.