Performance studies on six heuristic global optimization methods in the location of critical slip surface

Recently, many heuristic global optimization algorithms have evolved with success for treating various types of problems. Majority of these algorithms have not been applied to slope stability problem for which the presence of soft band and convergence problem (discontinuity of the objective function) may create difficulties in the minimization process. In this paper, six heuristic optimization algorithms are applied to some simple and complicated slopes. The effectiveness and efficiency of these algorithms under different cases are evaluated, and it is found that no single method can outperform all the other methods under all cases, as different method has different behavior in different types of problems. For normal cases, the particle swarm method appears to be effective and efficient over various conditions, and this method is recommended to be used. For special cases where the objective function is highly discontinuous, the simulated annealing method appears to be a more stable solution. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.