Avoiding Surprises in Slope Stability

The ability to analyze and compute factors of safety for slopes has increased greatly in the last decade. This ability has increased to the point that factors of safety can be computed using even complex limit equilibrium methods, such as Morgenstern and Price (1960), which used to be too computationally intensive for microcomputers; the finite-difference method, such as FLAC/Slope; and the finite-element method, such as PLAXIS.