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Global Failure Analysis by Weighted Finite Element Method

THEORY

Based on the stress output from the regular finite element analysis, a new weighted method (WFEM) was developed to perform the global failure analysis and design for two dimension geotechnical problems.

First, the local safety factor of each element is calculated from the Mohr shear failure assumption. Then the possible failure surface is searched throughout the defined searching zone, like those slope stability softwares. The global safety factor is defined as the weighted sum of local element safety factors, only those elements on the final failure surface.

The advantages of this new method:

Based on the FEM outputs, the stress and strain results are more reliable and accurate, as compared to those from traditionally sliced analysis.
The soil nonlinear properties are better considered.
The soil-structure interaction effects, on both failure surface and global safety factor, are better considered.
The varing of safety factors, from place to place along the slip surface, is considered
So far, it works for slope, piled slope, foundation on slope, shallow foundation, and seismic earth dam.

SOFTWERE: GFA2D v1.5

The new Hyperbolic-Theta Model and 2D quadrate element are adopted to simulate soil. The linear elastic materal model, beam element, and 2D quadrate element are used for the nonsoil structure part. The input data file is similar to those for regular FEM software, except it needs eight more points to define a searching zone.

Software, manual, five examples, and a reference paper were ALL zipped into the following "wfem15.zip", for your downloading, FREE.

"HP DeskJet 600" was selected as the default printer for the ".doc" WordPerfect 6.0 files, so, they might need some edit work to fit different printer and wordprocessor. Because of the limited homepage space, I can not change the files into other format. Sorry!

Links to other sites on the Web

Please download "GFA2D" HERE (Last update 11/30/96), which is proud to be included in:

Dr. Tim Spink's Geotechnical & GeoEnviromental Software Directory
WWW Virtual Libary of Geotechnical Engineering (GVL) hosted by Dr. Mete Oner.

List of related references.

My pictures are here.

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