Engine Conditions

The Stopping Conditions in RocFall determine when the calculation for a particular rock will be stopped. These conditions are used for both Lump Mass and Rigid Body analyses.

In general, the default settings should be used. However, if you are doing a number of initial analyses, it may be acceptable to decrease the number of steps or increase the velocity cutoffs. Keep in mind that, at a certain point, these parameters will affect the analysis results.

Maximum Time per Rock

This is the maximum analysis time per rock.

Maximum Steps per Rock

This sets the maximum steps/events for each rock path before the simulation is cut off. As the number of steps increases, the amount of memory and time required for the analysis increases. Note that, if you see that a lot of rocks are stopping based on this condition, you should increase the maximum number of steps in order to find the actual result.

Stopped Velocity Cutoff

The Stopped Velocity is the velocity at which the rock is considered to be no longer moving. For Rigid Body analyses, this is the centroid velocity.

Normal Velocity Cutoff

This condition is considered only if the Rigid Body engine is used. The Normal Velocity Cutoff is the velocity, at the point of contact, at which the rock transitions from free-falling to being in constant contact with the slope. This cutoff will have an effect when friction starts being considered.

Maximum Timestep

This condition is considered only if the Rigid Body engine is used. This is the biggest time step taken in the analysis. The smaller the time step, the more precise the analysis. However, the smaller the time step, the longer the analysis will take.