Visualizing the Factor of Safety in SVSlope

June 22, 2009

Standard SVSlope factor of safety output: a simple rainbow colormap A specialized highlighting colormap clearly identifies every factor of safety zone

Our recent improved color mapping features have added some much-needed power to better visualize your data. This power has now been added to SVSlope, answering the key question, is my slope going to fail and if so, where?

SVOffice 2009 now has a new colormap designed specifically for SVSlope. This is a highlighting colormap, which colors all data values within a certain range as a single color. This is ideal for visualizing SVSlope results, where factor of safety is everything. The definition is straightforward:

  • Anything below 1.0 is red
  • Anything from 1.0 to 1.3 is yellow
  • Anything from 1.3 to 1.5 is a light blue
  • Anything above 1.5 is green

The above two screenshots are taken from our Slopes_Group_1 > VS_1.SVM model. The one on the left is the default rainbow colormap. On the right, we see the highlighting colormap in action. Several steps are required to create this output:

  • Open the FOS Contours... dialog and set the contour plot type to Flood.
  • Switch to the Color Map tab and select the Factor of Safety colormap. Also enable the Color Gradient. Now close the dialog.
  • Open the Slip Surfaces... dialog and select Use Color Map from the Format tab.
  • That's it!

With all of the above settings in place, we gain several benefits. The color gradient option ensures that the factor of safety values correspond precisely to our color highlights. The trial slip surfaces are also colored, so we can clearly see where the factor of safety is high or low. This adds a lot of meaningful information to the model, as we can see which physical areas are the most safe (or not safe). The data is now very easy to interpret!

For more information on this feature, feel free to contact us directly, or download our student version and try it out for yourself!

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