Effect of Vertical Seismic Coefficient on the Stability of Rock Slopes against Plane Failure

Rock slope stability analysis has been a challenging problem for civil and mining engineers. This is mainly due to the presence of joints/discontinuities within the rock mass. There are several types of rock slope failures observed in different field situations; a plane failure is one of them. Analytical expressions for the estimation of factor of safety of the slope against the plane failure were developed in the past using the limit equilibrium approach. In the previous studies based on the analytical expressions, the effect of vertical seismic inertial force has not been observed as required for a generalized case. In this paper, an attempt is therefore made to investigate the effect of vertical seismic coefficient on the factor of safety of the slope considering a specific set of parameters that may arise at the field site. A parametric study is presented in detail to observe the effect of individual parameters on the factor of safety. The graphical presentations made may be used as design charts for field applications. Considering other specific field parameters more graphical presentations can be prepared following the approach described in this paper and can be used as design charts.