The limit analysis method has been extensively recognized as an efficient tool for a quick estimate of slope stability. Its common practice is to divide the potential failure domain into one or more standard geometric shapes such as the slice method or horn failure mechanism. However, these methods are difficult to solve the problems with spatially varying soil properties, especially for the variation of soil internal friction angles. To solve this problem, a meshed kinematical approach is proposed in this study for 3D slope stability analysis. The proposed approach takes advantage of the spatial discretization technique to achieve the failure mechanism generation based on soil properties rather than a predetermined geometric shape. It also shares some boundary conditions with the well-known horn failure mechanism to respect the theoretical framework of limit analysis. The obtained failure mechanism is meshed and composed of a large number of well-arranged elements, which in turn gives it great flexibility and compatibility in integrating spatially discretized data or combining numerical simulation methods. For verification purposes, the proposed approach is tested by some hypothetical slope stability cases and compared with the horn failure mechanism. Two case studies, respectively, involving a multi-layer slope and a slope subjected to pore water pressure, are presented to illustrate the practical application of the proposed approach. It is concluded that the meshed kinematical approach is effective for slope stability assessment, which can gain high computation accuracy with much less time consumption compared to the numerical simulations.

中文翻译：

---

用于 3D 边坡稳定性分析的网格运动学方法

极限分析法已被广泛认为是快速估算边坡稳定性的有效工具。其通常的做法是将潜在失效域划分为一种或多种标准几何形状，例如切片法或喇叭失效机制。然而，这些方法难以解决土壤性质空间变化的问题，特别是土壤内摩擦角的变化。为了解决这个问题，本研究提出了一种网格运动学方法，用于 3D 边坡稳定性分析。所提出的方法利用空间离散化技术来实现基于土壤特性而不是预定几何形状的失效机制生成。它还与众所周知的喇叭失效机制共享一些边界条件，以尊重极限分析的理论框架。得到的失效机制是网格化的，由大量排列良好的元素组成，这反过来又赋予了它在整合空间离散数据或结合数值模拟方法方面的极大灵活性和兼容性。出于验证目的，所提出的方法通过一些假设的边坡稳定性案例进行了测试，并与喇叭破坏机制进行了比较。分别介绍了两个案例研究，涉及多层边坡和受到孔隙水压力的边坡，以说明所提出方法的实际应用。得出的结论是网格运动学方法对边坡稳定性评估是有效的，