Seismic Analysis of Earth Slope Using a Novel Sequential Hybrid Optimization Algorithm

One of the most important topics in geotechnical engineering is seismic analysis of the earth slope. In this study, a pseudo-static limit equilibrium approach is applied for the slope stability evaluation under earthquake loading based on the Morgenstern–Price method for the general shape of the slip surface. In this approach, the minimum factor of safety corresponding to the critical failure surface should be investigated and it is a complex optimization problem. This paper proposed an effective sequential hybrid optimization algorithm based on the tunicate swarm algorithm (TSA) and pattern search (PS) for seismic slope stability analysis. The proposed method employs the global search ability of TSA and the local search ability of PS. The performance of the new CTSA-PS algorithm is investigated using a set of benchmark test functions and the results are compared with the standard TSA and some other methods from the literature. In addition, two case studies from the literature are considered to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed CTSA-PS for seismic slope stability analysis. The numerical investigations show that the new approach may provide better optimal solutions and outperform previous methods.