Abstract: In recent years, the researches on slope stability are no longer limited to the analysis of safety factor, but more and more attention is paid to the possible failure modes and processes of slopes so as to provide more targeted prevention and control suggestions. It is aimed to establish a method for simulating the failure and sliding process of soil slopes based on the XFEM, in which the sliding process of slopes is generalized into the process of the initiation, expansion and connection of the sliding surface. The contact behavior of the sliding surface is described by the cohesive fracture model and the frictional contact theory, and a fan-shaped expansion control domain is designed to describe the stress concentration and redistribution behavior of the front end of the sliding surface so as to judge the expansion time and direction of the sliding surface reasonably. The expansion regularities of sliding surface of a manually designed soil slope with heap loading on the top are simulated and analyzed. The influences of elastic modulus and internal friction angle of soil on the sliding regularities are compared. The results show that the proposed method can simulate the failure and sliding process of soil slopes reasonably and effectively. The influences of the two parameters on the sliding regularities are consistent with the general cognition, and the simulated results may provide a mesoscopic explanation for the development speed of thrust-type landslide and the local tensile cracks of the stratified slopes.