Reliability analysis of slope based on support vector machine

A new method of slope reliability analysis was presented which combined the support vector machine(SVM) and first order second moment(FORM).The learning samples were built by limited equilibrium method(LEM),then the relationship between the factor safety of slope and the random variables was established.The performance function and its derivatives in slope stability analysis were approximated by the support vector machine.The statistical moments calculated from the values of performance function and the corresponding gradients using support vector machine were then used in the first order second moment method for the calculation of the reliability index in slope safety analysis.An example was presented for illustrating the applicability of the proposed approach.The new method was effective in slope reliability analysis.And there was potential application to other reliability problems of complicated engineering structure with a considerably large number of random variables.