A BBO-based algorithm for slope stability analysis by locating critical failure surface

Determination of the critical failure surface is performed in stability evaluation process for road cut slope, embankments, dam, excavations, retaining walls and many more. Finding the critical failure surface in a rock or soil slope is very cumbersome and becomes a difficult constrained global optimization problem. Due to existence of discontinuous function and strong multiple local minima points, researchers are facing difficulties to employ trial-and-error methods in a large search space. Thus, classical optimization techniques fail to converge to a valid solution. In this study a stochastic method called biogeography-based optimization algorithm was adopted for analyzing the factor of safety. Based on the finding from the implementation and quantitative evaluation, it was found that the proposed method for locating critical failure surface in homogeneous soil slope acquires more efficient results over other implemented methods such as grid search and genetic algorithm. The validation and effectiveness of the proposed method are investigated by solving two benchmark case studies from the literature, while the simulation design for slip surfaces is carried out using ‘Rocscience slide’ software tool for comparing the results.