Deltaressystems design and analysis tools

Slope stability software for soft soil engineering

For The Netherlands the safety and stability of the primary sea and driver dikes is essential since over half the population lives below sea level. In total, 3,500 kilometres of primary dikes and over 100,000 kilometres of other embankments protect the country from flooding. Over the past 75 years, the stability of the majority of the dikes and embankments has been checked using methods and tools developed by Deltares, the leading Dutch Institute in this field. In 2002, GeoDelft founded Delft GeoSystems. Since the formation of Deltares in 2008, Delft GeoSystems has become Deltares systems.

Through Deltares systems these tools are now available in English for the International GeoEngineering community. Deltares systems tools come with a comprehensive manual and extensive validation and verification reports.

General

D-Geo Stability is a slope stability package for soft soils. Previous releases of D-Geo Stability were named MStab. Deltares systems tools follow best practice, and are developed according to modern software standards; therefore they are user-friendly and easy to learn.

Besides features generally found in other slope stability packages, D-Geo Stability offers several specific features for the design of river dikes and road embankments:

• Integration with other Deltares products
  Integration with the suite of other Deltares systems products. For example, settlements can be introduced using the D-Settlement program. In this way, safety analyses for various (settled) construction stages can be performed.

• The Reliability analyses module
  The reliability module supports the Eurocode 7, allowing for the input of partial safety factors. A stochastic distribution of parameters allows for semi-probabilistic analysis as well as probabilistic analyses. Using the model default parameters for stochastic properties, the user can easily switch from a standard safety analysis to a reliability analysis without additional input data.

• Probabilistic Random Field method
  Experts in probabilistic analysis can use the Bishop Probabilistic Random Field module, allowing users to take into account spatial variation of parameters.
  
• Uplift calculation
  The Uplift module allows for the safety analysis of river embankments under the influence of changing water levels in aquifers. This may result in the uplift of the hinterland, a mechanism causing numerical difficulties in most FEM approaches.

• Integration with Watex
  The movement of rising water levels as a result of extensive rainfall events is an important issue for river embankments. The Deltares Watex program allows for fast analysis, resulting in time dependant water pressure distributions that can be imported into D-Geo Stability.

D-Geo Stability comes as a standard module, which can be extended further with other modules to fit more advanced applications:

DGS 02.00 D-Geo Stability Standard module (Bishop and Fellenius)
DGS 02.01 Spencer module
DGS 02.02 Uplift module
DGS 02.03 Reliability Analyses module
DGS 02.05 Probabilistic Random Field module. 

Interaction with other Deltares systems tools

D-Geo Stability interacts with other Deltares systems tools for settlement analysis, seepage analyses, central project and database storage:

• D-Settlement for exchange of geometry
• D-Settlement for import of settled geometry
• D-Geo pipeline for exchange of geometry.

Support

Deltares systems tools are supported by Deltares. A group of 70 people in software development ensures continuous research and development. Support is provided by the developers and if necessary by the appropriate Deltares experts. These experts can provide consultancy backup as well.

On-line software (Citrix)

Besides purchased software, Deltares systems tools are available as an on-line service. The input can be created over the internet. Heavy duty calculation servers at Deltares guarantee quick analysis, while results are presented on-line. Users can view and print results as well as locally store project files. Once connected, clients will be charged by the hour.

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