ABSTRACT
Flood protection embankments are often subjected to high water pressures in an underlying aquifer. This situation can cause uplift of a blanket layer. Bishop’s limit equilibrium method (LEM) or a finite element method (FEM) is not able to analyze this situation well Instead, the Uplift-Van model is commonly used in this situation. The Uplift-Van model consists of an active- and a passive slip circle, both sharing the same bottom tangent line, see figure 1. Consequently, the optimization procedure to find the plane with least resistance needs to optimize in five dimensions. The solutions space is highly non-linear and the many required calls to the limit equilibrium equation makes met method slow, especially in a probabilistic environment. This article shows the implementation of the DPSO algorithm and compares it to the traditional optimization methods. Comparing different optimization methods shows that the DPSO algorithm is most suited for Uplift-Van’s solution space. This paper shows that convergence is quick and robust and is dependent upon few optimization parameters. The quality of the search is better that both a brute force method and a genetic algorithm. Uplift-Van slip plane. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780429426506/3ca45366-3fe4-42d4-90f4-5e24b005d12d/content/fig388_1.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
