# Stability of a Compacted Sand Slope Model Subject to
## 1 Introduction  
The behavior of human-made slopes interferes with many geotechnical applications, such as access embankments in bridge projects, extension of road works and earthen dams. The stability of such structures is reliant of two load components: the self-weight and applied loads both at the crest and slope sides. Combining these two load components for a given ground slope with prescribed inclination and water condition is helpful for the design of a foundation in plane strain condition, i.e., strip footing. The overview reported on below shows numerous publications on slope stability dealing with different aspects. [PERSON] and [PERSON], 1976, [1]) reported on the difficulty of predicting the triggering of landslides at small depth due to annual and daily rainfall. Furthermore, slope stability with induced water infiltration can trigger landslides, especially in earth dams. In this framework, [PERSON], 2005, [2] performed numerical modelling of landslides by implementing [PERSON]'s stability criterion into two finite element codes. This approach has been used to study the behavior of nonlinear boundary problems, suchas for the landslide that occurred on the \"Trevoux\" hillside after an intense rainfall period in 1983. [PERSON], 2008, [3], investigated the slope stability in unsaturated soil by incorporating the measurement of suction from laboratory tests. The influence of suction on the slope stability after numerical computations was assessed by experimental results. It was determined that the influence of suction favors an increase in the factor of safety of slope stability. [PERSON] et al., 2015, [4] performed numerical modelling for studying the behavior and analysis of slope stability of an earthen dam subjected to a simulated earthquake based on that, which occurred in 2003 at Boumerdes (Algeria). The studied case history refers to Takesbt-Tizi Ouzou earth dam. Numerical predictions agreed fairly well with observed displacements for which the stability of the dam was not affected. Studying the presence of water in slopes by infiltration and induced seepage is very challenging. In fact, different influence factors affect the slope stability. [PERSON] et al., 2016, [5] investigated a slope failure induced by a rainfall phenomenon. These authors proposed 2D experimental and numerical models by integrating seepage flow to determine the critical slope angle to approximate the threshold of a sudden failure. In fact, different influencing factors affect the slope stability, [6; 7; 8; 9]. [PERSON] et al., 2018, [10] built a laboratory box model in which a compacted sand slope model was subjected to a uniform vertical stress applied at the crest slope up to failure. The authors compared the experimental results to numerical predictions of the failure load by assuming circular slip surfaces. Later, [PERSON] et al., 2019, [11] investigated model tests loaded by a rigid plate resting on unreinforced and reinforced sand slopes by geotextiles. They focused on the determination of the ultimate bearing capacity of a rigid plate subjected to an eccentric load located towards or opposite to the facing slope. The authors highlighted the effect of load inclination on the ultimate bearing capacity of a strip footing that represents a major concern as pointed out by several authors. For this application, previous research showed that the soil total unit weight (\(\gamma\)) has a limited influence on the failure load of the ground slope, [12; 13; 14; 15; 16; 17; 18; 19; 20; 12; 13; 14]. In a recent study, [PERSON] et al., 2020, [7] investigated the stability of a deposited phosphogypsum embankment by finite element method. A plane strain model was proposed to predict the evolution of settlement and horizontal displacement during the operations of stage construction of the phosphogypsum embankment. Mohr-Coulomb constitutive law was adopted during the computations. The stability of phosphogypsum embankment prevailed during construction when the slope angle did not exceed 20\({}^{\circ}\).