Reliability Analysis of Layered Soil Slope Stability using ANFIS and MARS Soft Computing Techniques.

Soil slope stability is an important concern for constructing any structure on a soil slope. As soil is heterogeneous in nature due to its formation process, soil slope stability analysis cannot be done without considering the variability in the properties of soil. To consider the variability in soil properties, the research approach has shifted towards a probabilistic approach. In this paper, two soft computing techniques i.e., Adaptive Network based Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) and Multivariate Adaptive Regression Spline (MARS), are used for reliability analysis of layered soil slope stability. As the soil slope stability mainly depends on three properties of soil i.e., unit weight (?), cohesion (c) and angle of shear resistance (?), these are taken as input variables for the models and factor of safety of slope was taken as output. The stability analysis is carried out using the Morgenstern-Price method. The models were accessed using statistical parameters like NS, RPD, RMSE, R2, PI, GPI. The results showed that although both models performed well, the model MARS outperformed the other. Therefore, MARS can be used as a reliable soft computing technique for analyzing soil slope stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]