Discretization technique for stability analysis of complex slopes

In practice, the natural slopes are frequently with soils of spatial properties and irregular features. The traditional limit analysis method meets an inherent difficulty to deal with the stability problem for such slopes due to the normal condition in the associated flow rule. To overcome the problem, a novel technique based on the upper bound limit analysis, which is called the discretization technique, is employed for the stability evaluation of complex slopes. In this paper, the discretization mechanism for complex slopes was presented, and the safety factors of several examples were calculated. The good agreement between the discretization-based and previous results shows the accuracy of the proposed mechanism, proving that it can be an alternative and reliable approach for complex slope stability analysis.