Risk de-aggregation and system reliability analysis of slope stability using representative slip surfaces

This paper develops a risk de-aggregation and system reliability approach to evaluate the slope failure probability, p(f), using representative slip surfaces together with MCS. An efficient procedure is developed to strategically select the candidate representative slip surfaces, and a risk de-aggregation approach is proposed to quantify contribution of each candidate representative slip surface to the p(f), identify the representative slip surfaces, and determine how many representative slip surfaces are needed for estimating the pf with reasonable accuracy. Risk de-aggregation is performed by collecting the failure samples generated in MCS and analyzing them statistically. The proposed methodology is illustrated through a cohesive soil slope example and validated against results from previous studies. When compared with the previous studies, the proposed approach substantially improves the computational efficiency in probabilistic slope stability analysis. The proposed approach is used to explore the effect of spatial variability on the pf. It is found that, when spatial variability is ignored or perfect correlation assumed, the pf of the whole slope system can be solely attributed to a single representative slip surface. In this case, it is theoretically appropriate to use only one slip surface in the reliability analysis. As the spatial variability becomes growingly significant, the number of representative slip surfaces increases, and all representative slip surfaces (i.e., failure modes) contribute more equally to the overall system risk. The variation of failure modes has substantial effect on the pf, and all representative surfaces have to be incorporated properly in the reliability analysis. The risk de-aggregation and system reliability approach developed in this paper provides a practical and efficient means to incorporate such a variation of failure modes in probabilistic slope stability analysis. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.