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Evaluation of the Probability of Failure in Rock Slope Using Fuzzy Reliability Analysis  

Park, Hyuck-Jin (Department of Geoinformation Engineering, Sejong University)
Publication Information
Economic and Environmental Geology / v.41, no.6, 2008 , pp. 763-771 More about this Journal
Abstract
Uncertainties are pervasive in engineering geological problems. Therefore, the presence of uncertainties and their significance in analysis and design of slopes have been recognized. Since the uncertainties cannot be taken into account by the conventional deterministic approaches in slope stability analysis, the probabilistic analysis has been considered as the primary tool for representing uncertainties in mathematical models. However, some uncertainties are caused by incomplete information due to lack of information, and those uncertainties cannot be handled appropriately by the probabilistic approach. For those uncertainties, the theory of fuzzy sets is more appropriate. Therefore, in this study, fuzzy reliability analysis has been proposed in order to deal with the uncertainties which cannot be quantified in the probabilistic analysis due to the limited information. For the practical example, a slope is selected in this study and both the probabilistic analysis and the fuzzy reliability analysis have been carried out for planar failure. In the fuzzy reliability analysis, the dip angle and internal friction angle of discontinuity are considered as triangular fuzzy numbers since the random properties of the variables cannot be obtained completely under the conditions of limited information. In the study, the fuzzy reliability index and the probabilities of failure are evaluated from fuzzy arithmetic and compared to those from the probabilistic approach using Monte Carlo simulation and point estimate method. The analysis results show that the fuzzy reliability analysis is more appropriate for the condition that the uncertainties arise due to incomplete information.
Keywords
fuzzy sets theory; fuzzy reliability index; probability of failure; uncertainty; probabilistic analysis;
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