Analysis of Slope Stability and Software Development Based on Single-Grid and Two-Grid Finite Element Methods

Slope stability has been a long-standing problem in geotechnical practice. The difficulty in analyzing slope stability may be attributed to geological complexity and versatile environments, but the limitations of analysis methods should not be ignored. In this work, the conventional limit equilibrium methods and the FE stress-based limit equilibrium methods with special emphasis on their limitations are reviewed, and the advantages of the finite element method with the capability of strength reduction are pointed out and illustrated by using some slope examples. Particularly, a flowchart of decision tree on selecting single-grid or two-grid search scheme is proposed for the shear strength reduction finite element method of slope stability analysis. Based on some slope examples, it is demonstrated that the automatic selection or switch between the single-grid scheme and the two-grid scheme can be remarkably superior to the single mesh scheme from the perspectives of computational cost and software development. © 2017, Springer International Publishing Switzerland.