ABSTRACT
The factor of safety for homogenous media is often of major concern in order to evaluate the stability of a system. Different standards in different countries around the world are based on values of factors of safety. The factor of safety can be calculated with the shear strength reduction technique using finite element or finite difference codes. This approach has a number of advantages over conventional stability analysis. The main advantage is that the critical failure surface, or the mode of failure must not be determined in advance, it is found automatically, and failure mechanisms involving non-local deformation behavior of soft rock or soil — often seen in e. g. 3D failure analysis — can be calculated. The paper gives details on how to use the shear strength reduction technique in FLAC and FLAC3D.
