Searching for the critical slip surface and the lowest factor of safety in
slope stability analysis can be achieved by means of optimization technique
s. A new search procedure in generating kinematically admissible slip surfa
ces has been introduced in this paper. Such a procedure is based, mainly, o
n the Monte Carlo methods, where both the critical global slip surface as w
ell as its associated factor of:safety is determined Several practical exam
ples, of known minimum factor of safety and its associated slip surface, ha
ve been used to demonstrate the efficiency and capability of the proposed m
ethod. The method is intended to be robust and effective to solve problems
that involve extremely complicated slope geometry. It is as powerful as any
other powerful optimization methods.