Surface Generation Method
The Surface Generation Method in the Slip Surface Options dialog allows you to choose one of two options:
- Classic Search
- User-Defined Surfaces
- Intelligent Search
Classic Search
The Search Methods option allows you to generate slip surfaces by choosing one of the Search Method options (e.g. Cuckoo Search, Particle Swarm, Grid Search) to search for critical slip surfaces with the minimum safety factors. This is the default Surface Generation Method which will be used most of the time.
User-Defined Surfaces
The User Defined Surfaces option requires that you define slip surfaces using Add User-Defined Slip Surface. This allows you to define and analyze individual spherical, ellipsoidal or general slip surfaces with user-defined parameters.
If you choose User Defined Surfaces, you can still apply the following options:
to the user-defined surfaces.
Intelligent Search
Intelligent Search in the Slip Surface Options dialog is Slide3’s newest algorithm to identify minimum slip surfaces in models. Regions of interest are identified using a new formula for initializing solutions in the search space. Then several “search clusters” are used to search more thoroughly in these regions. This new algorithm improves search coverage over existing methods and provides the user with more information about their model.
The Search Refinement alters the thoroughness of the search, which can be seen reflected in the advanced parameters of each search refinement option. The advanced parameters are:
- Minimum number of preliminary surfaces: This represents the floor for preliminary surfaces, which are used to refine the regions of interest and ultimately the search space. Generally, increasing this value will increase the accuracy of your ROI safety map. The number of preliminary surfaces scales according to the size of the search space so changing this value may not change the number of preliminary surfaces, which you will be able to see in the compute dialog.
- Number of clusters: This is the number of search clusters. Increasing this value will facilitate more local searches, and therefore improves confidence that you have found the true minimum slip surface. Increasing this value increases compute time in exchange for allocating more resources to your search.
- Cap number of minimum FS at: This sets the ceiling for the number of slip surfaces displayed in modeler upon completion of computation.