Seismic stability assessment of rock slopes is an important task in regions that are prone to earthquakes. These assessments are mostly conducted using pseudo-static and time history analyses with the ubiquitous linear Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion. The Mohr-Coulomb criterion, though simple and easy to incorporate into analyses programs, is nonrepresentative of the true strength behavior of rock masses. As an alternative, the Hoek-Brown failure criterion is nonlinear and much more adequate for estimation of rock mass strengths. Although many studies have been conducted on pseudo-static and time history analyses of rock slopes using Hoek-Brown failure criterion, little to no attempt had been made to compare and to establish a link between them. However, in this study, an attempt has been made to accomplish such task. To achieve this, a series of seismic stability analyses are conducted on a typical ‘poor quality rock mass’ and an ‘average quality rock mass’ slopes. The pseudo-static analyses are conducted with horizontal seismic coefficients (k_h) ranging from 0.00 to 0.50, and the time history analyses with design earthquakes having horizontal peak ground accelerations [PGA (H)] of approximately 0.20g, 0.30g, 0.40g, and 0.50g. In comparing and establishing a link between pseudo-static and time history analyses, the results of factors of safety, potential failure zones, horizontal displacements, and the yielded regions of the slopes are considered. From these results, a k_h value that adequately represents the dynamic process for a pseudo-static analysis is determined. Hence, for the poor quality rock mass slopes, k_h should be at most 34% of the PGA (H) coefficient, and for the average quality rock mass slopes, it should be at most 90% of the PGA (H) coefficient.

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