Locating the general failure surface of earth slope using particle swarm optimisation

In this study, a new particle swarm optimisation (PSO) approach is proposed for evaluating the factor of safety (FS) in a slope stability analysis based on the limit equilibrium method. The safety factors of the general slip surfaces are calculated using a concise algorithm of the Morgenstern-Price method, which satisfies both the force and the moment equilibriums. Each new slip surface is randomly generated by a straight-line technique. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated using a set of three benchmark functions and three slope stability problems from the literature. The results indicate that the new method can provide high-quality, accurate and efficient solutions for computing the FS. Moreover, this method can predict a more critical failure mechanism of earth slope and outperform both the other methods in the literature and the standard PSO.