Transient Groundwater
The Transient page in the Project Settings dialog allows you to define the number of stages and the time at each stage for a transient groundwater analysis. You can also choose the stages at which the safety factor is to be calculated.
To enable the Transient page in Project Settings, you must first turn on the Transient Groundwater option in the Advanced section of the Groundwater page in Project Settings.
To define the transient groundwater stages:
- On the Transient page, enter the Number of Stages.
- Enter the Time at each stage.
- The Time Units will correspond to the Time Units selected on the General page of the Project Settings dialog. If necessary, go to the General page and choose the desired time units.
- You can also define the time by calendar date. If you select the Define by Date
button at the right of the dialog, a date column will appear. Times will automatically be calculated according to the date. - To carry out a slope stability (safety factor) analysis at any stage of a transient groundwater analysis, select the Calculate SF checkbox for the desired stage(s). If the checkbox is not selected, then only the groundwater results will be calculated for that stage, the safety factor will not be calculated.
- Select OK in Project Settings.
You can now define the groundwater boundary conditions at each time stage, and carry out a slope stability analysis at the selected stages. See the Tutorial 5: Transient Groundwater Analysis for detailed tutorials describing how to set up a transient groundwater model.
Transient FEA Options
If you select the FEA Options button on the Transient page, you can customize analysis parameters for the Transient finite element groundwater analysis. This includes the Tolerance, Maximum Number of Iterations and Number of Time Steps.
The definition of the Transient FEA Options are the same as the Steady State Options, see the Groundwater Method topic for details.
By default, the Number of Time Steps used at each stage by the Groundwater Compute engine, is automatically determined by Slide2 (Number of Time Steps = Auto). If desired, you can force the compute engine to use a pre-determined Number of Time Steps, by entering a number from 1 to 50 for the Number of Time Steps.