Evaluation of Seismic Slope Displacements Based on Fully Coupled Sliding Mass Analysis and NGA-West2 Database

In this study, two predictive models for seismic slope displacements are developed based on an equivalent-linear fully coupled sliding mass model and 3,714 ground-motion recordings selected from the Next Generation Attenuation (NGA)-West2 database. Both predictive models use the sliding system’s yield acceleration and initial fundamental period $T_s$ as predictor variables, whereas they use different sets of vector intensity measures (i.e., spectral acceleration at a degraded period of the system $1.5T_s$ and Arias intensity in one model; peak ground acceleration and spectral acceleration at 2 s in another). The models are developed following the framework of model BT07, a predictive model for estimating the sliding displacement based on the fully coupled sliding mass analysis. The framework consists of two parts, namely, the probability of “zero” displacement ($<1\mathrm{cm}$) and the statistical distribution of “nonzero” displacement ($\ge 1\mathrm{cm}$). The proposed models in this study can be regarded as updates of the BT07 model, which can be used for estimating earthquake-induced displacements for a wide range of slope cases.