• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.360-373
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• 2021

Many sources of uncertainty exist in geotechnical analysis ranging from the material parameters to the sampling and testing techniques. The conventional deterministic stability analysis of a plane failure in rock slope produce a safety factor but not a probability of failure or reliability index. In the conventional slope stability analysis by evaluating the ground uncertainty as an overall safety factor, it is difficult to evaluate the stability of the realistic rock slope in detail. This paper reviews some established probabilistic analysis techniques, such as the MCS, FOSM, PEM, Taylor Series as applied to plane failure of rock slopes in detail. While the Monte - Carlo methods leads to the most accurate calculation of the probability of safety, this method is too time consuming. Therefore, the simplified probability methods could be alternatives to the MCS. In this study, using these simple probability methods, the failure probability estimation of a plane failure in rock slope is presented.

• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.158-169
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• 2019

A probabilistic model that can predict the residual useful lifetime of structure is formulated by using the gamma process which is one of the stochastic processes. The formulated stochastic model can take into account both the sampling uncertainty associated with damages measured up to now and the temporal uncertainty of cumulative damage over time. A method estimating several parameters of stochastic model is additionally proposed by introducing of the least square method and the method of moments, so that the age of a structure, the operational environment, and the evolution of damage with time can be considered. Some features related to the residual useful lifetime are firstly investigated into through the sensitivity analysis on parameters under a simple setting of single damage data measured at the current age. The stochastic model are then applied to the rubble-mound breakwater straightforwardly. The parameters of gamma process can be estimated for several experimental data on the damage processes of armor rocks of rubble-mound breakwater. The expected damage levels over time, which are numerically simulated with the estimated parameters, are in very good agreement with those from the flume testing. It has been found from various numerical calculations that the probabilities exceeding the failure limit are converged to the constraint that the model must be satisfied after lasting for a long time from now. Meanwhile, the expected residual useful lifetimes evaluated from the failure probabilities are seen to be different with respect to the behavior of damage history. As the coefficient of variation of cumulative damage is becoming large, in particular, it has been shown that the expected residual useful lifetimes have significant discrepancies from those of the deterministic regression model. This is mainly due to the effect of sampling and temporal uncertainties associated with damage, by which the first time to failure tends to be widely distributed. Therefore, the stochastic model presented in this paper for predicting the residual useful lifetime of structure can properly implement the probabilistic assessment on current damage state of structure as well as take account of the temporal uncertainty of future cumulative damage.