Slope Stability Analysis using Element-Free Galerkin Method and a visco- plastic approach with the shear strengh reduction technique

Resumo

The majority of slope stability analyses are performed using either the computational approach of tradi-
tional Limit Equilibrium Methods (LEM) or the Finite Element Method (FEM). Several applications in geotechni-
cal engineering involve large displacements, thus it becomes attractive to employ meshless methods. In this paper

the meshless method Element-Free Galerkin (EFG) with a visco-plastic approach is applied to the slope stability
analysis. An analysis is performed to demonstrate the capability of the EFG model to evaluate the slope stability,
which is considered as a plane strain state for the stability analysis of homogeneous, isotropic and dry soil slope.
A non-linear EFG approach with the shear strength reduction technique is applied to assess the factor of safety and
potential slip surface. The results show good agreements with values found in the literature of classical methods
(LEM and FEM), and with a meshless method. The failure criterion is assumed to be reached when the iterative

process does not converge after a maximum number of iterations. The location and form of the potential slip sur-
face are naturally obtained from the results of displacements and principal plastic strains.Therefore, the principal

plastic stress or strain analysis becomes a strong alternative to verify the slope stability state.