Abstract
In this paper, the authors discussed about the newly proposed method by the Civil Engineering Institute of Ministry of Construction for estimating the seismic stability of embankment dams. The main feature of the method is composed of 2 reforms onto the conventional method. That is, the first is related to the alteration of the computational method of factor of safety against sliding and considerable increase in the magnitude of estimated seismic force in design. The second is related to the alteration in estimation of material shear strength.
In this paper, only the first point is discussed from the view point of the increase in the magnitude of seismic force and effect of the change of acting point of seismic force.
Several examples of computation were carried out, and were compared with the safety factor obtained by the conventional method.
As a result, it is clarified that the newly proposed method gives considerable decrease in thesafety factor compared to the conventional method, especially for shallow top sliding mass of an embankment.
