Estimating Fully Probabilistic Seismic Sliding Displacements of Slopes from a Pseudoprobabilistic Approach

Permanent sliding displacements are used to evaluate the seismic stability of earth slopes, and current practice utilizes a pseudoprobabilistic approach to predict the expected sliding displacement. The pseudoprobabilistic approach specifies a design ground-motion level based on a probabilistic seismic hazard analysis and a specified hazard level (e. g., 2% probability of exceedance in 50 years), but the displacement is predicted deterministically based on the design ground-motion level. The fully probabilistic approach develops a hazard curve for sliding displacement, and it is used to assess the displacement of the slope for a given hazard level. Comparisons of the fully probabilistic and pseudoprobabilistic approaches indicate that the pseudoprobabilistic analysis provides nonconservative estimates of sliding displacement in most cases. This paper presents a modification to the pseudoprobabilistic approach that provides displacement values more consistent with the fully probabilistic approach. This modification involves specifying a displacement greater than the median, in order to take into account the uncertainty in the displacement prediction. The appropriate value of displacement above the median is a function of the k(y)/PGA value and the model used to predict the displacement. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)GT.1943-5606.0000431. (C) 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.