SIMULATION OF TOPPLING FAILURE OF ROCK SLOPE BY NUMERICAL MANIFOLD METHOD

As one type of rock slope failures, topping failure can be accurately simulated only when several aspects are correctly calculated such as deformation and stress, contacts between blocks, contact stress, movement of blocks, open/close of contacts between blocks, development of failure plane, and crack generation and propagation. Current numerical methods encounter many difficulties in simulating toppling failure, especially for rock slope with lots of rock-bridges. Numerical manifold method (NMM) can deal with these highly discontinuous problems and be used to model the toppling failure of rock slopes. This paper first introduces the fundamental principles, modeling of contacts, calculation of contact force and stress, and modeling of failure in NMM. Then, several case studies are conducted to testify the accuracy and convergence of method; comparisons with method, based on limit equilibrium principle, which was proposed by Goodman and Bray (G–B method) and centrifuge test are conducted. Finally, the topping failure of left bank of one high dam is simulated. Results show that the NMM can be used to correctly calculate the toppling safety factor, simulate the failure process of slope toppling, and accurately model the whole failure process of rock slopes with many rock-bridges.