A Comparative Study on Effects of Different Assumptions on the Calculation of Factor of Safety of Slopes

The factor of safety for given slip surface can be obtained easily by assuming the normal stress along the slip surface base and solving the statistic equilibrium equations for the whole sliding body.This method is characterized by no iteration and easy convergence.However,the effect of different assumptions of normal stress on the results of given slip surface has not been reported.The stochastic method is used in this paper to generate different assumptions of normal stress along the slip surface base,and the results related to different assumptions can be calculated.It can be summarized that the nearer to the critical slip surface,the smaller the difference.For some slip surfaces,the difference can be up to 900%.