La aplicación del análisis inverso de deslizamientos como herramienta para la determinación de los parámetros geomecánicos del suelo

A landslide can be considered as a large-scale field test, where back analysis or inverse modeling directly provides the soil strength parameters. Moreover, the necessity for determining a representative sample for the testing is avoided. A new method of determining soil parameters from back analysis of slope failures is presented in this paper, based on combining finite element analysis and optimization techniques. The optimization algorithms used in this study are the NonLinear Least Squares (NLLS) and the Coupled Local Minimizers (CLM). An illustrative example is presented, considering a simple homogenous slope. The results of the analysis show that the proposed technique is efficient to determining soil parameters from slope failures by retaining the advantages of finite element slope stability analysis. This process helps to overcome some limitations and uncertainties in the use of laboratory and in-situ tests. Generally, the errors involved in the back analysis of a slope failure will cancel out by applying the back analyzed shear strength in further analyses of new slopes in the same region. The back calculated values can also be efficiently used to analyze the stability of other slopes with similar characteristics.