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A novel probabilistic simulation approach for forecasting the safety factor of slopes: a case study

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Abstract

Stabilization of slopes is considered as the aim of the several geotechnical applications such as embankment, tunnel, highway, building and railway and dam. Therefore, evaluation and precise prediction of the factor of safety (FoS) of slopes can be useful in designing these important structures. This research is carried out to evaluate the ability of Monte Carlo (MC) technique for the forecasting the FoS of many homogenous slopes in the static condition. Moreover, the sensitivity of the FoS on the effective parameters was identified. To do this, the most important factors on FoS, such as angle of internal friction \((\emptyset )\), slope angle \((\alpha )\) and cohesion \((C)\) were investigated and used as the inputs to forecast the FoS. Then, a regression analysis was performed, and the results were used for the FoS prediction using MC. The obtained results of MC simulation were very close with the actual FoS values. The mean of the simulated FoS by MC was achieved as 1.32, while, according to actual FoSs, it was 1.27. These results showed that MC is an acceptable technique to estimate the FoS of slopes with high level of accuracy. Moreover, based on the results of correlation and regression sensitivity analyses, it was concluded that angle of internal friction, was the most influential one on the results of FoS in both types of sensitivity analyses.

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Abbreviations

\(\emptyset\) :

Angle of internal friction

AI:

Artificial intelligent

\({\text{C}}\) :

Cohesion

CPD:

Continuous probability distributions

FoS:

Factor of safety

FD:

Finite difference

FM:

Finite element

LA:

Limit analysis

LEM:

Limit equilibrium method

MC:

Monte Carlo

MR:

Multiple regression

\({\text{PGA}}\) :

Peak ground acceleration

RMSE:

Root mean squared error

\(\alpha\) :

Slope angle

\(H\) :

Slope height

\(\gamma\) :

Unit weight

VAF:

Variance account for

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Civil Engineering Department, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

    S. Farid F. Mojtahedi

  2. Faculty of Civil Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Skudai, Malaysia

    Sanaz Tabatabaee

  3. Young Researchers and Elites Club, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

    Mahyar Ghoroqi

  4. Department of Civil Engineering, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad, Iran

    Mehran Soltani Tehrani

  5. Department of Geotechnics and Transportation, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310, UTM Skudai, Johor, Malaysia

    Behrouz Gordan

  6. Department of Civil Engineering, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

    Milad Ghoroqi

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  1. S. Farid F. Mojtahedi
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Correspondence to Mahyar Ghoroqi.

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Mojtahedi, S.F.F., Tabatabaee, S., Ghoroqi, M. et al. A novel probabilistic simulation approach for forecasting the safety factor of slopes: a case study. Engineering with Computers 35, 637–646 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00366-018-0623-5

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