Safety factor and failure mechanism in geotechnical engineering: A numerical study

Abstract

Prediction of failure shapes and safety factors is the routine tasks for the geotechnical engineering profession. This paper presents an upper bound approach associated with the edge-based smoothed finite element method and second-order cone programming to estimate the ultimate load and its corresponding failure mechanism. The behavior of the whole domain is assumed to be rigid perfect plasticity and is governed by the Mohr–Coulomb failure criteria with the associated flow rule. The upper bound analysis turns to solve the optimization being casted as the second-ordered cone programming using a state-of-the-art code developed by mathematical researchers. Several simulations using the current numerical procedure have been carried out to investigate the dependency of safety factors and failure modes on soil parameters and geometry problems.