Investigating the critical slip surface of soil slope based on an improved black hole algorithm

Analysing the stability of soil slopes and investigating critical slip surfaces present an important and very complicated optimisation problem. In this paper, we solve this problem by introducing and modifying a new global optimisation (black hole algorithm) technique to form a new global optimisation algorithm for continuous optimisation (the improved black hole algorithm). By combination with typical mature limit equilibrium analysis (the Spencer method and the Morgenstern-Price method), the improved black hole algorithm was used to find the critical slip surface of soil slope. Thus, this paper proposed a new method for finding the critical slip surface of soil slope. Finally, the proposed method was verified through two typical numerical soil slope cases and was compared with the black hole algorithm and other extant studies. The results indicated that the applicability, validity and effectiveness of the improved black hole algorithm showed an improvement over previous studies and over the black hole algorithm. Moreover, the proposed method was applied for one highway landslide, and the determined critical slip surface was well agreement with the real one.