Reliability assessment of 2-D rock slopes by discontinuous deformation analysis

In this paper a reliability assessment of rock slope stability by Random Sets Theory (RST) and Discontinuous Deformation Analysis (DDA) is presented. Rock masses are formed mainly by rock blocks and discontinuities, which interact when the rock mass is subjected to any external perturbation i.e. an excavation. The presence of discontinuities makes rock mass a complex material which cannot be properly modeled by traditional continuous methods, like finite elements method (FEM) or finite differences method (FDM), since rotations and detachment are not allowed by continuum based methods. These processes can be mimicked by Discrete Elements Methods (DEM). Among DEM, DDA is an implicit formulation, in which displacements are the unknowns to solve at every time step. On the other hand, reliability assessments of the response of the DDA models were carried out by RST, in order to consider the uncertainty of input parameters under limited information.