Effect of weak intercalation on failure mode of rock slopes under seismic excitation

To study the failure mechanism of a slope with weak intercalation under a seismic wave clearly is helpful to find out the starting mechanism of rock slope landslide. A distribution function of energy density was built to analyze the energy distribution of a seismic wave in a slope with weak intercalation; moreover, the function was used to investigate the failure phenomena observed in shaking table tests. The relationship of the seismic energy distribution and the failure mechanism was established by the theoretical analysis method. We further analyzed the effect of the thickness and dip angle of weak intercalation on the dynamic response of the layered slope. From the theoretical analysis, it was found that the stability of a counter-tilt slope with weak intercalation may be worse than that of a horizontal layered slope or a consequent bedding slope; furthermore, it was found that the tilt angle of weak intercalation is an essential factor in the failure mode of a rock slope. The proposed method can benefit research on detecting the failure region and failure mechanism of layered rock slopes.