Abstract: Slope instability is a serious geological disaster.The problems of earth pressure and foundation bearing capacity can also be analyzed by the idea of slope stability analysis, so the stability analysis of slope is very important.At present, most of the analysis methods for slope stability have some shortcomings.The rigid body limit equilibrium method needs to introduce certain assumptions to solve it.Finite element strength reduction method may violate the properties of materials in some cases.The finite element limit equilibrium method can avoid the above problems.In theory, this method can be used for the stability analysis of soil structure under any working condition.Based on this, the paper extends the traditional limit equilibrium theory, discusses the relationship between the limit equilibrium state of a point in the soil and the limit equilibrium state of the soil along the whole sliding surface, and defines the safety factor of the soil along the sliding surface as the evaluation standard of the overall and local stability of the soil.The finite element limit equilibrium method is applied to the analysis of three classical problems in soil science.The results show that the results obtained by the finite element limit equilibrium method are feasible.