A soil slope failure usually experiences the initiation

development

and run-through of the slip plane. The extended finite element method (XFEM) has been applied to simulate the process of slope failure in recent years. However

there are still some shortcomings to be overcome in practical applications of XFEM to landslides. For example

the initial position of the slip plane needs to be prescribed

and the extending direction of the slip front-end cannot be tracked accurately. In this paper

the mechanism of slip-plane initiation and development is introduced

and the process of automatically determining the initial position of the slip plane based on the stress history and the relative relationship between the tensile stress level and the shear stress level in the soil element is proposed and described in detail. Then

a new method for determining the front-end propagation direction of the slip plane by using the sector control domain and the circular control domain is introduced

which effectively improves the simulation precision of the XFEM for the landslide failure process. Finally

two typical slope cases with different failure types are analyzed to verify the reliability and rationality of the proposed method further.