Probabilistic Kinematic Analysis of Rock Slope Stability Using Terrestrial LiDAR

Kinematic analysis determines the stability of rock slope by analyzing the relationship between the slope face orientation and the discontinuity orientation. In this study, terrestrial LiDAR was used to obtain a large amount of discontinuity orientation data and then, the probabilistic characteristics of the orientation data obtained using terrestrial LiDAR were analyzed. Subsequently, the probabilistic kinematic analysis was carried out using the discontinuity orientations generated randomly from Fisher function in Monte Carlo simulation. In addition, the probabilistic kinematic analysis was also performed using the actual orientation data obtained from the terrestrial LiDAR to compare their results. Consequently, the results of both probabilistic analyses showed similar results. Therefore, if sufficient orientation data are provided by other means such as terrestrial LiDAR, the probabilistic analysis will show reasonable results using the actual field data without randomly generating orientation data. In addition, the deterministic kinematic analysis was also carried out using representative orientation of discontinuity sets. The analysis result of the probabilistic analysis showed similar results with the deterministic analysis because the dispersion of the discontinuity orientations in a joint set is not large.