Abstract
Modern engineered slopes are designed to exceed certain safety targets set out in design codes. This is in stark contrast to earthen infrastructure inherited from the 18 th century which typically was constructed in a haphazard manner without design. This infrastructure seldom meets modern deterministic guidelines yet clearly exhibits some degree of safety, as a failure has not occurred in the intervening years. This paper highlights the use of reliability theory for evaluating the stability of existing engineered slopes. A comprehensive review of geotechnical uncertainty and existing reliability based techniques are outlined. Furthermore, the paper highlights the issue of finding the critical slip surface and gives a brief summary of the current state of the art. Finally a case study of an Irish railway embankment is presented and both a deterministic and reliability analysis is performed on it highlighting the benefits of probabilistic methods over traditional techniques.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 61-81 |
| Number of pages | 21 |
| Journal | Geotechnical Special Publication |
| Issue number | GSP 286 |
| Early online date | 1 Jun 2017 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jun 2017 |
| Event | Geotechnical Safety and Reliability: Honoring Wilson H. Tang - Denver, USA United States Duration: 4 Jun 2017 → 7 Jun 2017 |
Funding
The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the Earth and Natural Sciences (ENS) Doctoral Studies Programme, funded by the Higher Education Authority (HEA) through the Programme for Research at Third Level Institutions, Cycle 5 (PRTLI-5), co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the European Union Framework 7 project SMART RAIL (Project No. 285683).
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Civil and Structural Engineering
- Architecture
- Building and Construction
- Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology