Abstract: Despite deep research and broad application of safety analysis methods for levees based on stochastic mechanics in recent decades, systematic summary is still in lack. This paper aims to make a review on the main contents and engineering applications of safety analysis methods for levee based on stochastic mechanics. In the light of three typical failure modes of levees, the risk factors that should be considered in safety analysis are analyzed, and the uncertainty and correlation of risk factors are systematically sorted out. Commonly adopted safety analysis methods based on stochastic mechanics are also summarized with their applications in the aforementioned typical failure modes; the safety analysis methods based on random field theory and intercorrelation of risk factors are expounded with emphasis. It is concluded that the key problems for the development of levee safety analysis method based on stochastic mechanics is the research of finite element method for random field and the intercorrelation among risk factors.

Key words: levee safety, stochastic mechanics, risk factors, intercorrelation, random field