General Project Settings

On the General page of the Project Settings dialog, you can define:

• Analysis Method options (Lumped Mass or Rigid Body)
• Units

To open the Project Settings dialog:

• Select Project Settings on the toolbar or the Analysis menu.

Analysis Method

The Analysis Method allows you to choose one of two different methods for modelling rocks in a rockfall analysis - Lump Mass or Rigid Body.

For a description of the two approaches see Analysis Method Setting in RocFall2.

Fragmentation

The user has the option to analyze fragmentation if the Lump Mass method is selected. Fragmentation accounts for rocks fragmenting into smaller blocks on impact with the slope. If fragmentation analysis is enabled, the Consider rotational velocity option will be disabled. The same logic also applies in reverse where enabling Consider rotational velocity will disable the option to conduct fragmentation analysis. With fragmentation, a Settings button will appear which grants user access to advanced fragmentation analysis settings. Within Fragmentation Settings, the user may adjust the lower block mass threshold and select Advanced rock type entry. The lower block mass threshold controls the lower mass limit of blocks to be analyzed in fragmentation. As the total number of fragments could grow with each impact and reduce the overall computational performance, it becomes more important to analyze the larger fragments that could affect design and not the smaller particles. Any resulting rock fragment with a mass smaller than this threshold are terminated in computation. The Advanced rock type entry controls user access to the Advanced entry form for block material characterization in the Rock Type Library.

Units

Both metric and imperial measurement units are available in RocFall2. You may select one of the following options:

• Metric SI (m, kg, kJ)
• Imperial Foot-Pounds (ft, lbm, ft-lbf)
• Imperial Poundal-Feet (ft, lbm, pdl-ft)

Save Computed RocFall Paths

• Checking the box for Save RocFall Paths in the project settings dialog will save all computed rock paths when you save the file.

Report Paths' First Impacts on Collector(s) Only

There are cases where a rock may pass through a data collector more than once (i.e., the rock rolls down and up a slope then back down). When the Report path's first impacts on collector(s) only option is checked, only the rock's initial pass through the collector is taken into account when graphing collector data.