Abstract

Slope stability analysis of any natural or artificial slope aims at determining the factor of safety of the slip surface that possesses the lowest factor of safety. The search for the minimum factor of safety based on limit equilibrium methods is a complex optimization problem where there are several local minima. In this paper, a newly developed heuristic global optimization algorithm, called gravitational search algorithm (GSA), is introduced and applied in slope stability analysis. The safety factors of the general slip surfaces are calculated using a concise algorithm of Morgenstern and Price method, which satisfies both force and moment equilibrium. The reliability and efficiency of the proposed algorithm are examined by considering a number of published cases. The results indicate that, the proposed method could provide solutions of high quality, accuracy and efficiency, and could predict the critical failure mechanisms of earth slope and outperforms the other methods in the literatures.

Key words: Slope stability, minimum factor of safety, gravitational search algorithm.