Seismic displacement of bedding slopes stabilized with anchor cables and piles considering dynamic yield acceleration

Seismic displacements are critical analysis components for evaluating the slope stability during earthquakes and essentially regulated by the yield acceleration of slopes. The conventional Newmark’s method applies the constant yield acceleration to estimate the seismic displacement of slopes, albeit disregarding the time-dependent nature of yield acceleration. This paper presents an efficient analytical method for determining the seismic displacement of Bedding Slopes stabilized with anchor Cables and Piles (BSCP) by considering the dynamic yield acceleration. The dynamic process of yield acceleration was achieved by updating the instantaneous elongation of anchor cables and rotation of piles at each time increment. This was then incorporated within the Newmark’s method to solve the seismic displacement of the BSCP. The results show that the proposed method can reliably predict the general trend of seismic displacement of the BSCP under earthquake loadings, and correlates well with the dynamic finite difference method. Notably, the yield acceleration increases dynamically during the excitation of seismic ground motion and is closely related to the type of earthquake waves. Ignoring the dynamic yield acceleration leads to an overestimation of the post-seismic displacement of the BSCP. Moreover, the proposed method allows for the multi-layer landslide with minor alternations in the formulation of each component of work rates. This study facilitates a better displacement-based seismic design of the BSCP.