11. Chart-Based Slope Stability Assessment Using the Generalized Hoek–Brown Criterion

Slope stability charts are used extensively in practical application to meet the need of quick assessment of rock slope design. However, rock slope stability charts based on the Generalized Hoek–Brown (GHB) criterion, which is one of the most widely adopted failure criteria to estimate rock mass strength in rock engineering, are considerably limited. This paper presents new stability charts for the analysis of rock mass slopes satisfying with the GHB criterion. Firstly, charts for calculating the factor of safety (FOS) of a slope for a specified slope angle β = 45° are proposed. Secondly, a disturbance weighting factor f_D is introduced to illustrate the effect of disturbance factor D upon the stability of rock slopes. Thirdly, a slope angle weighting factor f_β is proposed to show the influence of slope angle β on slope stability. Combined with stability charts based on β = 45°, the weighting factors f_D and f_β allow the calculation of the FOS of a slope assigned various slope angle under different blasting damage and stress relief conditions. The reliability of the proposed charts is tested against numerical solutions. The results show that FOS from the proposed charts exhibits only 3.1% average discrepancy from numerical solutions using 1680 sets of data. The proposed charts are simple and straightforward to use and can be adopted as useful tools for the preliminary rock slope stability analysis.