Results

The Results tab of Project Settings provides various options to help users control how much results/data gets displayed and saved.

Interpolation Time Step

The interpolation time step option controls the time increment at which rock path results are interpolated. A rock path consists of critical points, such as rock-slope contact points or rock-barrier contact points, and path points in between the critical points are interpolated according to the interpolation time step. By default, the interpolation time step is set to 0.16s in RocFall3 1.017 onwards and 0.016s in earlier versions. A larger interpolation time step was introduced in version 1.017 to reduce the overall rock path data, which helps to decrease the saved model file size and expedite file saving and loading times.

The magnitude of interpolation time step can affect the interpretation of some results.

The following results are not affected:

• Barrier results
• Runout distances
• Heatmaps of endpoints
• Heatmaps of impact points

These results are not affected because they use rock-slope or rock-barrier contact points (critical points) and none of the points interpolated between the critical points.

The following results are affected:

• Heatmaps of total kinetic energy
• Heatmaps of translational kinetic energy
• Heatmaps of rotational kinetic energy
• Heatmaps of bounce heights
• Path details
• Exported path results
• Rock path contours

Heatmaps of kinetic energy and height are affected by the interpolation time step because they rely on available rock path data for statistical analysis. Heatmaps are generated using all available rock path data directly above the heatmap. As shown in the figures below, a different number of rock data points would be used to calculate the maximum, mean, or percentile value for any heatmap grid depending on the interpolation time step used. Through internal testing, we found using an interpolation time step of 0.16s helps to keep heatmap values within 10% of those calculated from much smaller time steps.

Path details and exported path results provide users with rock path details through time and entries are reported at a time increment defined by the interpolation time step. For example, if using an interpolation time step of 0.16s, then path details of every rock would be reported at every critical contact point and at every 0.16s between the critical points. This means that increasing the interpolation time step would result in fewer reported rock path entries.

Rock paths are also contoured using available rock path data, and thus changing the interpolation time step can affect the granularity of these contours.

If at any point backward compatibility is required and users are looking to exactly match results as reported in RocFall3 versions 1.016 and earlier, simply use an interpolation time step of 0.016s.