One of the most crucial problems in geo-engineering is the instability of unsaturated slopes, causing severe loss of life and property worldwide. In this study, five novel meta-heuristic methods are employed to optimize locating the Critical Failure Surface (CFS) and corresponding Factor of Safety (FOS). A Finite Element Method (FEM) code is incorporated to convert the strong form of the Richard’s differential equation to the weak form. More importantly, the derived code can consider both the seismic and seepage conditions additional to the static loading. Eventually, the proposed optimization procedure is validated against benchmark examples and some insights are provided.

Keywords: Optimization, meta-heuristic algorithm, black hole mechanics optimization, finite element method, critical failure surface, Richards’ equation.

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