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Abstract

Slope stability is considered one of the crucial topics in geotechnical engineering. Accurate soil slopes stability analyses are essential as slope failures could cause catastrophic environmental and human disasters. Geosynthetics are widely used as stabilizing elements in slope stability analyses. Incorporating geosynthetic reinforcement generally improves the global factor of safety against slope failure. However, in practice, analyses must not only focus on the global slope stability but should also account for any sliding along geosynthetic interfaces, since geosynthetics are considered as week layers within the reinforced soil mass and act as potential slip interfaces that should be checked for stability. Although slope stability analyses are predominantly conducted using a traditional limit-equilibrium method, in this study the Heuristic Particle Swarm optimization method was embedded into this classic approach to identify all possible sliding along a geosynthetic interface that a conventional limit equilibrium method might overlook. Since it is generally perceived that reinforcement variables might affect the stability of the reinforced slopes, a parametric study is conducted on geosynthetics variables such as the tensile strength, length, and number (vertical spacing), for slopes with berm and without berm. The comparative results obtained show that its length has a significant effect on slope stability, while the tensile strength and spacing has a minimal one. It is also worth noting that the reinforcement's length and spacing are significantly reduced when a berm is added to the slope and thus highly improves its stability with less reinforcement materials.

Keywords

Slope stability, Geosynthetics, Geogrids, Rocscience, Heuristic Particle Swarm method, Limit equilibrium analysis

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