Three-dimensional slope stability analysis using independent cover based numerical manifold and vector method

A three-dimensional (3D) slope stability analysis method is presented in this paper based on three-dimensional independent cover based manifold method (ICMM3D) and vector sum method (VSM). ICMM3D is proposed in the framework of independent cover, which avoid the time-consuming and error-prone cover system generation of convention numerical manifold method (NMM). It is very suitable for the continuous/discontinuous deformation analysis in slope engineering. Then, with the stress field obtained by ICMM3D, VSM is employed to calculate the factor of safety, which is effective in computation and clear in physical meaning. In addition, a new strategy of discretization of the slip surface is proposed, which discretizes the slip surface into a set of calculating points in order to avoid errors caused by the special handling in the boundary columns in limit equilibrium method (LEM) and the tedious triangulation of the slip surface in VSM. Finally, genetic algorithm is employed to search for the critical slip surface. Numerical examples demonstrate the efficiency, accuracy and robustness of the proposed method.