Reliability and landslide consequence analysis of long heterogeneous soil infrastructure slopes: A parallel computing investigation

Long infrastructures, like flood defense levees, built upon diverse soils, often face complex landslide failures. Risk assessments for such structures involve evaluating slope stability reliability and potential landslide consequences. Historically, embankment slope reliability and failure assessments focused on shorter sections due to computational limitations. This study, however, delves into a longer 3D soil slope section, 100 times the height, using the random finite element method to analyse the size or length effect. It conducts a parametric study varying the soil strength’s horizontal correlation length to understand slope failure initiation in heterogeneous soils. In contrast to prior work, this paper emphasises several facets: the realised factor of safety (FOS) distribution, quantification of discrete unstable zones and failures, and the size impact on the reliability and landslide consequences of long embankment slopes. Findings indicate the Weibull distribution better fits the realised FOS, aiding in predicting long embankment slope system reliability when combined with the weakest link theory. While multiple failures are possible for very long soil embankment slopes, observations suggest a greater likelihood of a single localised failure despite this potential.