Seismic Bearing Capacity of Strip Footings Placed Adjacent to Rock Slopes

The bearing capacity of strip footings placed adjacent to the rock slopes subjected to pseudo-static horizontal earthquake body forces has been investigated by using the upper bound (UB) finite element limit analysis (FELA) in combination with a mesh adaptive strategy. The generalized Hoek-Brown (GHB) failure criterion is applied to describe the strength properties of rock masses, which can be treated as its native form without the smoothing of the yield surface while employing the second-order cone and power cone programming to solve the optimization models. Based on the UB FELA method, the seismic bearing capacity factor is determined considering the effect of different governing parameters, namely the horizontal earthquake acceleration coefficient k(h), the normalized slope height H/B, the rock strength ratio & sigma;(ci)/& gamma;B, the geological strength index GSI and the material constant m(i). For design purpose, a series of non-dimensional charts are provided, and typical failure mechanisms are also discussed in detail.