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ABSTRACT: Rock slope design comprises systematic evaluation of geological, geotechnical, and engineering parameters affecting safety and stability of slopes in rockmass. However, it is common to have several design possibilities for a single slope in rockmass. In the forementioned instance, reliability-based design (RBD) could provide insights on the most feasible slope design for rockmass. However, this generally involves several computational runs for each slope design. In this study, combined Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) and sample reweighting method was explored with the aim of obtaining parameters for rock slope design during a single computational run. With this approach, the repeated run of MCS for different design possibilities are avoided. One key advantage of the method is that it saves computational time by using a single run of simulation since there is possibility of a great number of design scenarios at a rock slope. To evaluate the performance of this approach, the proposed method was applied to a real-life rock slope. Results reveal that the proposed approach for rock slope design is both reliable and advantageous by providing sufficient failure samples for reliability estimation of the final designs for various design possibilities. In addition, the approach proposed in this study can link site characterization processes to design, and significantly reduces the time and efforts required for the processes. Through the proposed approach, there is improved knowledge on the contribution of uncertain rock parameters and slope conditions involved in design to the rock slope. 1. INTRODUCTION Mining engineering is faced with several uncertainties, ranging from variability of rock conditions, uncertainties in rock parameters that are affected by geological processes, limited number of test values or site mapping, and model uncertainties (Baecher and Christian, 2003; Qi and Li, 2018; Aladejare and Wang, 2017). The uncertainties affect mining designs, and incorporating the uncertainties into mining design procedures in a quantitative manner is crucial to obtaining reliable designs of structures in mining engineering. A reliability-based framework can be used for such incorporation. In the past few decades, several studies have been conducted on reliability analysis of slope stability (Jimenez-Rodriguez et al. 2006; Hoek 2007; Tang et al., 2013; Dadashzadeh et al., 2017; Aladejare and Wang, 2018; Aladejare and Akeju, 2020).
Aladejare et al. (Sun,) studied this question.