• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.23-37
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• 2002

Failure of the cut slope is triggered by combination of internal and extemal failure factors. Internal failure factors are related to geological and geometrical conditions of slope itself, and natural and/or artificial loadings on slope can be the external failure factors. Influences of these failure factors show different intensity according to the ground condition and are controlled by behavior characters of the slope. In this study, the soil depth ratio(SR), block size ratio(BR) and rock strength are used as the criteria to divide ground condition based on behavior characteristics. Ground condition of the slope is divided into discontinuous jointed rock mass and continuos soil-like mass, highly fractured rock mass and massive rock mass by the criteria(SR and BR). The SFi-system is a rating system to determine the slope failure index(SFi) by analyzing internal and external factors based on classification of the ground condition. The results of the SFi-system application to the real cut slopes show close relationship between the SFi value and potential or dimension of the failure. Therefore, the SFi-system can be used as a useful tool to predict and analyze the characteristic of the slope failure.