Structural Elements

An important aspect of geomechanical analysis and design is the use of structural support to stabilize a rock or soil mass. Structures of arbitrary geometry and properties, and their interaction with a rock or soil mass, can be modeled. This section describes the types of structural-support members (cables, hybrid bolts, beams, piles, shells, geogrids and liners), or structural elements, available in the program, as well as the numerical formulation that supports the structural-element logic.

The structural elements can either be independent of, or coupled to, the grid representing the solid continuum. The structural-element logic is implemented with the same explicit, Lagrangian solution procedure as the rest of the code (as opposed to an implicit, matrix-inversion procedure): the full dynamic equations of motion are solved, even for modeling processes that are essentially static. Large displacements, including geometric nonlinearity, can be accommodated by specifying a large-strain solution mode; and the full dynamic response of the system in the time domain can also be obtained with the dynamic-analysis option.

The details of structural elements in Itasca software are described in the following sections:

structure Commands & FISH (ALL)