Slice Method: Stability of Slopes

This lecture covers the slice method, developed in geotechnical engineering for slope stability analysis before the advent of finite element methods. The method involves dividing the soil above a potential failure surface into slices and analyzing the forces acting on each slice to calculate the factor of safety. Different approaches and simplifications are presented, including the Bishop method and the Fellenius method. The lecture explains the assumptions made in these simplified methods and demonstrates how to calculate the factor of safety using numerical methods. The importance of the slice method lies in its applicability to soils with spatially varying properties, making it a widely used technique in practice.