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Geotechnical Engineering 2
CIVE1129
RMIT Academic staff:
Offering Coordinator: Dilan Robert (PhD)
Course Coordinator: Abbas Mohajerani (PhD)

Introduction to Slope Stability

Textbook: Soil Mechanics and Foundations, Muni Budhu,3rd
edition, 2011

The materials used in these 33 slides are copyright and are from the textbook “Soil Mechanics and
Foundations”, by Muni Budhu, 3rd. edition, 2011, with copyright John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (as outlined in the
book). They are produced for the teaching staff and they should be made available only as a PDF file in a
protected local directory to students who have enrolled in Geotechnical Engineering 2 (CIVE1129).

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Learning outcomes

• estimate the stability of slopes with simple

geometry and geological features
• describe the forces and activities that provoke
slope failures
• describe the effects of seepage and pore water
pressure on the stability of slopes.
• Calculate the factor of safety for slopes with
simple geometry.

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Importance

• Slopes in soils and rocks are abundant in nature and in

man-made structures.
• Natural forces (wind, water, snow, etc.) change the
topography on Earth and other planets, often creating
unstable slopes.
• Failures of natural slopes (land- slides) and man-made
slopes have resulted in much death and destruction,
economic losses, and environmental damage.

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Slope failure near a roadway

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Key terms

• Slip or failure zone is a thin zone of soil that reaches the critical state or
residual state, resulting in movement of the upper soil mass.
• Slip plane or failure plane or slip surface or failure surface is the surface of
sliding. Sliding mass is the mass of soil within the slip plane and the ground
surface.
• Slope angle is the angle of inclination of a slope to the horizontal. The slope
angle is sometimes referred to as a ratio, for example, 2:1 [horizontal
(H):vertical (V)].

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SOME TYPES OF SLOPE FAILURE

Loose
soil

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SOME CAUSES OF SLOPE FAILURE

• Erosion
• Rainfall
• Earthquakes
• Geological Features
• External Loading
• Construction Activities
• Fill Slopes
• Rapid Drawdown

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Erosion

Water and wind continuously

erode natural and man-made
slopes. Erosion changes the
geometry of the slope,
ultimately resulting in slope
failure or a landslide. Rivers
and streams continuously
scour their banks,
undermining their natural or
man-made slopes ( Figure b)

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Rainfall

Long periods of rainfall

saturate, soften, and erode
soils. Water enters into
existing cracks and may
weaken underlying soil
layers, leading to failure, for
example, mud slides

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Earthquakes

Earthquakes induce dynamic forces

especially dynamic shear forces that
reduce the shear strength and stiffness of
the soil.
Porewater pressures in saturated coarse-
grained soils could rise to a value equal to
the total mean stress and cause these
soils to behave like viscous fluids—a
phenomenon known as dynamic
liquefaction.
Structures founded on these soils would
collapse; structures buried within them
would rise. The quickness (a few
seconds) with which the dynamic forces
are induced prevents even coarse-grained
soils from draining the excess porewater
pressures.
Thus, failure in a seismic event often
occurs under undrained condition.

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Geotechnical Features

Many failures commonly result from

unidentified geological features.
A thin seam of silt (a few millimeters
thick) under a thick deposit of stiff clay
can easily be overlooked in drilling
operations, or one may be careless in
assessing borehole logs only to find
later that the presence of the silt caused
a catastrophic failure. Sloping, stratified
soils are prone to translational slide
along weak layers. You must pay
particular attention to geological
features in assessing slope stability.

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External Loading

Loads placed on the crest of a

slope (the top of the slope) add to
the gravitational load and may
cause slope failure. A load placed
at the toe, called a berm, will
increase the stability of the slope.
Berms are often used to remediate
problem slopes.

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Construction Activities

Construction activities near the toe

of an existing slope can cause
failure because lateral resistance is
removed.

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Fill Slopes

Fill slopes are common in embankment construction. Fill (soil) is placed at the
site and compacted to specifications, usually greater than 95% Proctor
maximum dry unit weight.
The soil is invariably unsaturated, and negative porewater pressures develop.
The soil on which the fill is placed, which we will call the foundation soil, may
or may not be saturated. If the foundation soil is saturated, then positive
porewater pressures will be generated from the weight of the fill and the com-
paction process.
The effective stresses decrease, and consequently the shear strength
decreases. Thus, slope failures in fill slopes are most likely to occur during or
immediately after construction.

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Rapid Drawdown

Reservoirs can be subjected to rapid

drawdown. In this case the lateral
force provided by the water is
removed and the excess porewater
pressure does not have enough time
to dissipate (Figure i). The net effect
is that the slope can fail under
undrained condition.
If the water level in the reservoir
remains at low levels and failure did
not occur under undrained condition,
seepage of groundwater would occur
and the additional seepage forces
could provoke failure (Figure j).

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THE ESSENTIAL POINTS ARE:

• Geological features and environmental conditions (e.g.,

external loads and natural forces) are responsible for most
slope failures.
• The common modes of slope failure in soils are by
translation, rotation, flow, and block movements.

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INFINITE SLOPES

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INFINITE SLOPES

• FS depends on slope angle and friction angle of the course-grained soil

(Equations: 16.4 and 16.7)
• Factor of safety without seepage and with seepage
• Slope angle of a clean, coarse-grained soil at
limit equilibrium, FS = 1?

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ROTATIONAL SLOPE FAILURES

• We will continue to use the limit equilibrium method, but instead of a

planar slip surface of infinite extent we will assume circular (Figure a)
and noncircular (Figure b) slip surfaces of finite extent. We will assume
the presence of a phreatic surface within the sliding mass.

Simple

see CH 11 of
textbook

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ROTATIONAL SLOPE FAILURES

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PROCEDURE FOR THE METHOD OF SLICES

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Method of slices
Bishop Method
Factor of
Safety:

ESA

See page 706

for the
procedure

TSA
Pore water pressure ratio

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Example

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Example

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STABILITY OF SLOPES: CHART METHODS

TAYLOR’S METHOD

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TAYLOR’S METHOD

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Bishop–Morgenstern Method

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Bishop–Morgenstern Method

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FACTOR OF SAFETY (FS)

• It is difficult to specify a particular FS for slopes because it is dependent on

many factors, including the geological conditions, types and density of
existing and anticipated structures, reliability of soil parameters, groundwater
and environmental conditions, and natural hazards. Consequently, the
decision on what factor of safety to use is subjective. The usual range of
factor of safety is 1.15 to 1.5. In the mining industry, tailing dams are
designed with FS about 1.1 to 1.2.

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