Hybrid of ant colony algorithm and simulated annealing algorithm and its application to the slope stability analysis

Searching critical slip surface is very necessary in slope stability analysis. At present, simulated annealing method and ant colony optimization algorithm are often used to search for critical slip surface of slope. However, the ant colony algorithm is apt to the local optimal and the simulated annealing algorithm slower convergence for the search of the minimum safety factor for the complex slope. Thus, a new hybrid optimization algorithm,was presented. Its application to searching for the noncircular critical slip surface of slopes was studied. An example was given to test the hybrid optimization algorithm. The results show that it can exactly find out the global optimal solution and the search efficiency is higher than that of simple ant colony algorithm and simulated annealing algorithm.