Current problems and subjects on numerical analysis of earthquake geotechnical engineering. For seamless analysis

There are continuum and discontinuum analyses in the evaluation of seismic stability of surrounding slope in nuclear power plant facility. However, we cannot rationally evaluate such seismic stability due to excessive conservative margin of the results by each analysis. If we can simulate the behavior from small to large deformation by hybridizing them, we can contribute not only to the rationalization of the slope stability evaluation but also the enhancement of evaluation precision in the numerical analysis. In this review, the previous numerical analyses and application cases of them in earthquake geotechnical engineering were classified into three categories, that is, continuum analysis, discontinuum one and the hybridizing process to identify their research themes. The present review has revealed that the research themes are the standardization of condition for conversion, construction of the technique to determine parameters related to conversion and the reasonable physical property set of DEM(Distinct Element Method) after conversion. Our future work will be development of a numerical analysis code hybridizing continuum and discontinuum analyses based on the identified research themes. (author)