Landslide simulation using limit equilibrium and finite element method

Abstract

Slope stability analysis is one of the ancient tasks in the geotechnical engineering. There are two major methods that is limit equilibrium method and finite element method are used to analyze the stability of slope. The factor of safety will affect the remediation method to be underdesign or overdesign if the analysis method is not well chosen. This can lead to safety and costing problems which are the concern of the public. Furthermore, there also no statement that issued one of the analysis methods is more preferred than another one. For this research, the soil sample collected from landslide at Wang Kelian are undergoes several tests to obtain the parameters of the soils. Then, those results are inserted into modeling by software of Plaxis and Slope/W to obtain the FOS based on different factors such as geometry and homogenous of slope. The FOS obtained by FEM was generally lower when compared with LEM but LEM can provide a obvious critical slip surface. The FOS differences between LEM and FEM are not more than 9%. This differences can be explained by the principle of the methods. Overall, the chosen analysis method was keened to the purpose of the analysis.