Earthquake destructiveness potential factor and slope stability

A procedure is proposed in the paper to estimate earthquake-induced displace¬ments of embankments and slopes. It incorporates the effects of the main seismic factors that govern the stability of slopes by introducing a single parameter representative of seismic action, the earthquake destructiveness potential factor PD. Em¬pirical regression equations linking PD to the dis¬placement s of Newmark’s rigid block vibrating horizontally with completely unsymmetrical resis¬tance were developed by analyzing 310 horizontal components of actual accelerograms. In addition, graphs allowing to calculate the seismic coefficients kc, the parameters necessary for defining the sliding surface and the correction terms for estimating the displacements in the most important practical cases (homogeneous infinite slope, local plane slope failure, local log-spiral slope failure) have been presented and their use was illustrated by means of examples.