KEY FEATURES
SLOPE/W MODELS A FULL RANGE OF STABILITY PROBLEMS
NATURAL SOIL AND ROCK SLOPES
SLOPE/W’s full-featured capability allows for the stability analysis of natural soil and rock slopes under a variety of conditions including surcharge and seismic loading, pore-water pressure fluctuations in the saturated and unsaturated zone, and more. An extensive material model library and flexible search techniques provide the capacity to handle the most complicated failure mechanisms possible in the field of geotechnical engineering.
SLOPE STABILIZATION
SLOPE/W includes a broad range of stabilization options for civil, geotechnical, and mining applications, from simple earthen toe berms to complex subsurface drainage and soil-structure techniques. The reinforcement functionality, material model library, and diverse pore water pressure definition can be used together to design even the most sophisticated slope stabilization options.
DAMS AND LEVEES
SLOPE/W is used worldwide for the design and analysis of hydraulic structures subjected to a variety of natural and anthropogenic forces including flood events, rapid drawdown, earthquake loading, and evolving hydrogeological systems. Comprehensive probabilistic and sensitivity analysis facilitates risk-assessment while integration with SIGMA/W or QUAKE/W allows for sophisticated finite element stability and Newmark deformation analyses.
CONSTRUCTION EXCAVATIONS AND MINE SLOPES
Modelling construction excavations and mine slopes is seamless with the use of SLOPE/W and the powerful workflow of GeoStudio. From vertical excavation cuts to benched mine slopes, the powerful geometry tools and unique GeoStudio analysis tree facilitate both reinforcement design and optimizing slope configurations.
ROADS, BRIDGES AND EMBANKMENTS
SLOPE/W is commonly used to assess stability of roadways, rail beds, bridge abutments, and MSE walls both during and after construction. SLOPE/W can analyze stability at each construction stage, including the effects of pore-water pressure changes and interaction with reinforcement.
VIEWING THE ANALYSIS RESULTS
Once you have solved your stability analysis, SLOPE/W offers many tools for viewing the results. Display the minimum slip surface and factor of safety, or view each one individually. View detailed information about any slip surface, including the total sliding mass, a free body diagram and a force polygon showing the forces acting on each slice. Contour the factors of safety, or show plots of computed parameters. Then prepare the results for your report by adding labels, axes, and pictures, or export the results into other applications such as Microsoft® Excel® for further analysis.

TYPICAL APPLICATIONS
SLOPE/W can model almost any stability problem, including:
- Natural earth and rock slopes
- Sloping excavations
- Earth embankments
- Open-pit high walls
- Anchored retaining structures
- Berms at the toe of a slope
- Surcharges at the top of a slope
- Earth reinforcement, including soil nails and geofabrics
- Seismic and earthquake loading
- Tension cracks
- Partial and total submergence
- Line load at any point
- Unsaturated soil behavior
THE POWER OF INTEGRATION
SLOPE/W offers simple but powerful analytical capabilities when used in combination with other GeoStudio products.
FORMULATION
SLOPE/W is formulated in terms of moment and force equilibrium factor of safety equations. For example, the Morgenstern-Price method satisfies both force and moment equilibrium. This general formulation makes it easy to compute the factor of safety for a variety of methods and to readily understand the relationships and differences among all the methods.
SLOPE/W can use finite element computed stresses from SIGMA/W or QUAKE/W to calculate a stability factor by computing both total shear resistance and mobilized shear stress along the entire slip surface. SLOPE/W then computes a local stability factor for each slice.
Probabilistic analysis can be performed by using normal distribution functions to vary soil properties and loading conditions. Using a Monte Carlo approach, SLOPE/W computes the probability of failure in addition to the conventional factor of safety.
FEATURES
- Limit equilibrium methods include Morgenstern-Price, GLE, Spencer, Bishop, Ordinary, Janbu and more.
- Soil strength models include Mohr-Coulomb, Spatial Mohr-Coulomb, Bilinear, Undrained (Phi=0), anisotropic strength, shear/normal function, and many types of strength functions.
- Specify many types of interslice shear-normal force functions.
- Pore-water pressure options include Ru coefficients, piezometric lines, pressure contours, a grid of values, spatial functions, or finite-element computed heads or pressures.
- Define potential slip surfaces by a grid of centers and radius lines, blocks of slip surface points, entry and exit ranges, fully specified shapes, or automatic.
- Use probabilistic soil properties, line loads and piezometric lines.
- Transient stability analyses
- And many more!
INTEGRATION WITH OTHER APPLICATIONS
USE PORE-WATER PRESSURES FROM SEEP/W, SIGMA/W, QUAKE/W OR VADOSE/W
Using finite-element computed pore-water pressures in SLOPE/W makes it possible to deal with highly irregular saturated/unsaturated conditions or transient pore-water pressure conditions in a stability analysis. For example, you can analyze changes in stability as the pore-water pressure changes with time.
USE STRESSES FROM SIGMA/W, OR QUAKE/W
Using finite element computed stresses in SLOPE/W allows you to conduct a stability analysis in addition to a static deformation or dynamic earthquake analysis. For example, you can compute the minimum factor of safety that will be reached during an earthquake, or you can find the resulting permanent deformation, if any, using a Newmark-type procedure.
MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
- Microsoft® Windows® 10, Windows® 8.1, Windows® 8, Windows® 7 SP1
- Intel® Pentium® 4 or better, or AMD Opteron™ or Athlon™ 64 or better. (GeoStudio is optimized for multi-core Intel processors)
- 1 GB hard disk space
- 1024×768 screen resolution.
For 3D features, your graphics card must support Direct3D® Feature Level 10_1 or greater.
This includes graphics cards such as (and newer than):- Nvidia® GT 300
- ATI® Radeon® HD 4000 Series
- Intel® HD Graphics 3000/2000
- Microsoft® .NET 4.0 will be installed automatically if it is missing.
SUPPORTED VIRTUAL MACHINES
The latest release of GeoStudio can be run on these VM platforms:
- VMware® ESXi™ 5.5 and 6.0
- VMware® Workstation™ 11 and 12
- Microsoft® Hyper-V® on Windows Server® 2016, 2012 R2, 2012, and Windows® 10
- Citrix® XenServer® 6.2, 6.5 and 7.0