1.0   Introduction

  • MacSlope is an app designed for Mac OSX 10.8+ to calculate the factor of safety of earth slopes, supporting commonly used methods of limit equilibrium slope stability analysis.
  • MacSlope is a fully-featured application, with the capability to:
  • Model complex geometries with an unlimited number of regions and materials.
  • Model complex pore pressure conditions for each region, through the use of piezometric surfaces, and ru or B-bar coefficients.
  • Model partially and fully submerged slopes.
  • Model tension cracks.
  • Model anisotropic materials.
  • Model reinforcements loads from anchors, piles, and geosynthetics.
  • Model vertical and inclined surcharge and point loads.
  • Model seismic loading, input as a horizontal acceleration for pseudo-static analysis.
  • Calculate the factor of safety using the Ordinary, Bishop's Simplified, Janbu's Simplified, Spencer's and General Limit Equilibrium methods.
  • Calculate probabilistic distributions of factor of safety with user-defined statistical distributions (Normal, Log-Normal, Uniform) of model parameters.
  • Analyze circular, compound, and user-defined slip shapes.
  • Search for the minimum factor safety using search grid, specified surface, auto search, and optimization techniques.
  • Create multiple stages within the same drawing file to analyze different geometry, material, and analysis sensitivities.
  • Plot contours of factor of safety for search grids, or display a "heat map" of colors.
  • Animate the slip surfaces and slices being analyzed as calculations progress.
  • Inspect the calculated slice forces and create custom plots of force and stress over the slip segment.
  • Import DXF files for quick creation of slope geometry.
  • Create reports (HTML/PDF) using staged results and custom plot content.
  • The MacSlope documentation explains how to use the many features and settings in the app, and covers some basics of the limit equilibrium slope stability methods. However, this document is not an engineering methodology, and the user is expected to have prior knowledge of slope stability analysis in order to use this app correctly.
  • Verification test cases of some commonly studied slope stability problems are included with this package, as demonstration of the agreement between MacSlope results and published results.
  • Use of this app is subject to the terms of the software license agreement. The reader's attention is directed to the legal note at the end of this documentation.