RocTopple Overview
RocTopple is an interactive software tool for performing toppling analysis and support design of rock slopes. The analysis is based on the popular limit equilibrium block toppling method of Goodman and Bray first published in 1976 in the paper, Toppling of Rock Slopes, and the block flexure toppling method of Amini, Majdi and Veshadi published in 2012 in the paper, Stability Analysis of Rock Slopes Against Block-Flexure Toppling Failure.
There are several different types of potential toppling failure modes in rock slopes, as described in Goodman and Bray (1976), Hoek and Bray (1981), and Amini, Majdi and Veshadi (2012). The toppling analysis in RocTopple is based on one specific, idealized failure mode, consisting of equally spaced rectangular blocks on a stepped base. Most real slopes do not conform exactly to the input parameters available in RocTopple. It is left to the engineer to decide on the applicability of the RocTopple analysis to a given slope. The sensitivity and probabilistic analysis options in RocTopple may help to quantify some of the uncertainty introduced by the analysis limitations.
The RocTopple Theory Documents summarize the method and equations used to calculate the toppling stability. Although the program input dialogs refer to the discontinuities as "joints," this is for the purpose of simplifying the terminology. The actual discontinuities in your slope model can be any type of planar discontinuity due to bedding, faults, joints, schistosity, etc., as long as the discontinuity strength and geometry can be modeled using the RocTopple input.