Evaluating the Excavation Methods on the Stability of Rock Slopes

Stabilizing slopes is one of the most important geotechnical cases which have an important effect on the road security. In the meantime, excavation methods have an important role in slope stability. These methods effect strength reduction factor (SRF) of slope s due to the force induced on rocks. In this paper four slopes with dips of 30, 45, 60 and 75 degrees were modeled by Phase2 software and in these models, the effect of rock disturbance factor (D) was surveyed on the slope stability. After analyzing the slopes, the diagrams were drawn based on the rocks disturbance factor effect on SRF. The results indicate that the slope stability is affected by the disturbance factor i.e. the excavation method, and in all the slopes because of excavation the SRF amount has reduced in static state. In addition the highest amount of SRF reduction has occurred for the disturbance factor between 0.9 - 1 i.e. the uncontrolled explosion excavation method in huge volume, with this difference that as the dip of slope increases the SRF rate decreases.