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Comprehensive Stability Evaluation of Rock Slope Using the Cloud Model-Based Approach

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Abstract

This article presents the cloud model-based approach for comprehensive stability evaluation of complicated rock slopes of hydroelectric stations in mountainous area. This approach is based on membership cloud models which can account for randomness and fuzziness in slope stability evaluation. The slope stability is affected by various factors and each of which is ranked into five grades. The ranking factors are sorted into four categories. The ranking system of slope stability is introduced and then the membership cloud models are applied to analyze each ranking factor for generating cloud memberships. Afterwards, the obtained cloud memberships are synthesized with the factor weights given by experts for comprehensive stability evaluation of rock slopes. The proposed approach is used for the stability evaluation of the left abutment slope in Jinping 1 Hydropower Station. It is shown that the cloud model-based strategy can well consider the effects of each ranking factor and therefore is feasible and reliable for comprehensive stability evaluation of rock slopes.

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Acknowledgments

Authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and the review of the paper. The present work is jointly supported by the China Key Basic Research (973) Program (no. 2011CB013504) and China Natural Science Foundation (no. 50911130366). Both are gratefully acknowledged. We also thank Dr. Shaohui Duan in Yalong River Hydropower Development Company, Ltd., for providing us substantial data of the case slope in this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geotechnical Research Institute, Hohai University, Nanjing, 210098, China

    Zaobao Liu, Jianfu Shao & Weiya Xu

  2. Laboratory of Mechanics of Lille, University Lille 1-Science and Technology, 59655, Villeneuve d’Ascq, France

    Zaobao Liu & Jianfu Shao

  3. Hainan Highway Design Institute, Haikou, 570206, China

    Fei Xu

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  1. Zaobao Liu
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  2. Jianfu Shao
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  3. Weiya Xu
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  4. Fei Xu
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Correspondence to Zaobao Liu or Jianfu Shao.

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Liu, Z., Shao, J., Xu, W. et al. Comprehensive Stability Evaluation of Rock Slope Using the Cloud Model-Based Approach. Rock Mech Rock Eng 47, 2239–2252 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00603-013-0507-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00603-013-0507-3

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