ABSTRACT
Monaghan (1977) and Lucy (1997), has been recently developed for solving large deformation and failure flow of geomaterials (Bui et al. 2007, 2008). The SPH method represents a powerful alternative approach for slope stability analysis and discontinuous slope failure simulation (Bui et al. 2009) which offers similar advantages to FEM. Furthermore, SPH provides physical insight into the failure mechanisms of the slope due to its capability to simulate gross discontinuous failure. In this paper, the above SPH framework is adopted in an attempt to simulate progressive and multi-stages slope failures induced by the rapid increase in water table level. For shake of simplicity, the rapid increase in water table level is modeled herein by step loading procedure rather than solving seepage flow equation, which is postponed to a near future publication. Three examples of slope failure are presented to investigate failure mechanism under different conditions, including low water table level, high water table level, and progressive increase in water table level. As for the slope with low water table level, failure is not occurred. To trigger slope collapse, the shear strength reduction method (Griffths et al. 1999) is applied. Results obtained from this paper argued that the SPH method is a powerful alternative to the traditional methods especially in handling large deformation and failure of slope during heavy rainfall condition.
