Reliability Analysis of an Embankment Built and Reinforced in Soft Ground Using LE and FE

Jean Lucas dos Passos Belo, Jefferson Lins da Silva and Paulo Ivo Braga de Queiroz
Additional contact information
Jean Lucas dos Passos Belo: Department of Airport Infrastructure, São José dos Campos, Aeronautics Institute of Technology (ITA), Vila das Acacias, São José dos Campos 12228-900, SP, Brazil
Jefferson Lins da Silva: Laboratory of Geosynthetics, São Carlos School of Engineering, University of São Paulo (USP), São Paulo 13566-590, SP, Brazil
Paulo Ivo Braga de Queiroz: Department of Airport Infrastructure, São José dos Campos, Aeronautics Institute of Technology (ITA), Vila das Acacias, São José dos Campos 12228-900, SP, Brazil

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 4, 1-19

Abstract: A coupling method is presented to integrate well-known geotechnical modeling commercial programs with a reliability one. Coupling enables us to use transformation methods, such as the first-order reliability method (FORM), to evaluate the reliability index ( β ) of a model, via the limit equilibrium (LEM) or the finite-element method (FEM). It was applied to a case study of a stage-constructed embankment on soft ground by considering two conditions, unreinforced and reinforced, to investigate its probabilistic stability. In addition, the value of β associated with a postconstruction settlement was acquired, and it showed one possibility that the coupling method is able to provide. The influence of the uncertainty level on reliability analysis was also analyzed. The outcomes were compared to the crude Monte Carlo simulation. As a result, the proposed approach was satisfactory, and the advantage of using it is presented; with a much lower computational cost than simulation methods, evaluation time may be up to 13.8 times faster than usual with great precision. Moreover, this approach can apply to other commercial programs widely used in practice.

Keywords: reliability; coupling method; transformation method; stage constructed; embankment; soft ground; geosynthetics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/4/2224/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/4/2224/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:4:p:2224-:d:750338

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().