Effect of Alternate Wetting and Drying on the Long Term Stabiity of Slope

Alternate wetting and drying usually occur in some parts of the slope,which is fairly harmful for its long term safety.The upper bound limit analysis of slope stability is only applicable for proportional loading.In case of alternate loading and unloading,a shakedown analysis is necessary for its long term safety evaluation.In this paper,an upper bound shakedown analysis based on strong version of Koiter's theorem is presented to analyze slope stability under such alternate loads.The safety factor,which is defined by shear strength reduction of the soils,is adopted by a quantitative analysis to evaluate the influence of alternate load on the slope stability.