FLAC3D

Fast Lagrangian Analysis of Continua

in 3 Dimensions
3DShop Tutorials

©2006
Itasca Consulting Group, Inc. Phone: (1) 612-371-4711
Mill Place Fax: (1) 612·371·4717
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 450 E-Mail: software@itascacg.com
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1 TUTORIAL 1 – VERTICAL SHAFT IN A STRATIFIED SOIL

In this tutorial, you will create a vertical shaft (140 ft deep, 20 ft diameter) inside a cubic block of
soil (200 ft × 200 ft × 200 ft) composed of two materials. The surface separating the two types of
soil is located at a height of 50 ft (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 CAD model and mesh of a shaft in a stratified soil

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1.1 Excavating the Shaft

1. Start 3DShop and, using File/New, open a new document.

2. Using Applications/3dprim/Parallelepiped, open the Parallelepiped dialog box
(Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2 The Parallelepiped dialog box

3. Enter (200, 200, 200) in the x, y and z fields, then click OK

to build a 200 × 200 × 200
cube (Figure 1.3).

Figure 1.3 A 200 × 200 × 200 cube representing the soil

4. Using Applications/3dprim/Cylinder, open the Cylinder dialog box (Figure 1.4).

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Figure 1.4 The Cylinder dialog box

5. Enter 10 and 140 in the radius and height fields. Make sure that the angle field contains
360, which means that you want an entire cylinder and not an angular sector of it. The
Fillet radius should remain 0, which means that you do not want to round the edges of
the cylinder. Click OK to build a cylinder (140 ft deep, 20 ft diameter) (Figure 1.5).

Figure 1.5 Cube and cylinder where the cylinder base is at height 0

Please note that, in the folder named Document, there is a folder named 3D World, which
now contains two objects: Shell, representing the block; and Shell-2, representing the
newly created cylinder.
At its present position, the cylinder protrudes from the cube. Since the cylinder represents
the excavated shaft, it must be flush with the top of the cube.
6. Select the cylinder and, using Objects/Translation, open the Direction Acquisition
dialog box. Then enter the coordinates of the starting and ending points of the translation
vector in the two columns of the translation vector. You can do this simply by clicking
on existing points, highlighted in red in Figure 1.6.

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7. Click on the red square at the center of the circle at the top of the cylinder to enter its
coordinates (0, 0, 140) in the first column. Click on the other red square (in the middle of
the lower-left edge of the square representing the top of the box) to enter its coordinates
(−100, 0, 100) in the second column of the Direction Acquisition dialog box. The orange
line visualizes the current translation vector (Figure 1.6).

Figure 1.6 The Direction Acquisition dialog box and the translation vector,
in orange

8. To make the top of the cylinder flush with the top of the box, you must translate the cylinder
by a vector representing the z-component of the current translation vector. Enter 0 for
the value of X in the second column. The translation vector is now vertical and hidden
inside the cylinder (Figure 1.7). In this figure, the cylinder has been rendered transparent
to show the current translation vector. Click OK to translate (Figure 1.8).

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Figure 1.7 The final translation vector is visible inside the cylinder

Figure 1.8 The cylinder representing the shaft positioned at its final location

9. Select the box. Then, use Applications/3dsolidSubtract to open the Subtract dialog
box. The label of the shell representing the box appears in the field marked First object
(Figure 1.9). The cylinder is masked by the block and may be difficult to click on. Drag

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the Subtract dialog box to a different location so you can see the contents of the Objects
Explorer window to your left. Click on the cylinder in the Objects Explorer to select it as
the object to subtract. Click OK to perform the subtraction. Please note that the Objects
Explorer to your left now contains only one shell.

Figure 1.9 The dialog box showing that Shell-2 (cylinder) is to be subtracted
from Shell (the cube)

10. Make the box transparent by right-clicking on it, selecting attributes and adjusting the
transparency (Figure 1.10).

Figure 1.10 The result of subtracting the cylinder from the block, with trans-
parency set to 50%

You have created a closed shell (also referred to as a solid) made of one material rep-
resenting an excavated block. You can add features to the model later, but it would be
useful to create a FLAC 3D mesh of the current model.

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11. Use File/Save As to open the Save As dialog box. In the Save as type field, the
default value is 3DShop Files (*.opn). In the File name field, select “Document1.opn,”
then click Save .

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1.2 Creating a Triangular Surface Mesh of the Model

12. Select the shell and, using Applications/3dmesh/Discretize, open the STL dialog
box. In the Tolerance fields located in the Discretize and Connectivity Analysis sections,
enter a length of about two orders of magnitude smaller than the smallest feature of your
model. Here, a tolerance of 0.1 would do. Enter the same value in the Chord error field
of the Create STL section of the dialog box. Finally, make sure that the Remove initial
object field in the Create STL section is checked (Figure 1.11).

Figure 1.11 The STL dialog box showing all parameters prior to creating a
surface mesh

13. Create a triangular surface mesh (also called an STL mesh) by clicking on Create
. Click
OK
to accept the mesh and remove the geometry (Figure 1.12).

Figure 1.12 A coarse triangular surface mesh of the model

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14. Use File/Save to save the triangular surface mesh. Select STL for the file type, and
“Document1.stl” for the file name.

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1.3 Creating an All-Hexahedral Mesh for FLAC 3D Using KUBRIX

15. Close the current document using File/Close. Open the STL file you have just created.
Closing the document and reading it back makes 3DShop aware that this is the file to be
used for creating a hex mesh.
16. Using Applications/Kubrix/Hexahedral Meshing, open the Hexahedral Meshing di-
alog box (Figure 1.13).

Figure 1.13 The Hexahedral Meshing dialog box

17. Click on the Default button to resort to the default values of all parameters. Please note
that the output file type is “.flac3d,” which can be directly read into FLAC 3D. Click Compute
to launch the computation (Figure 1.14).

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Figure 1.14 Output of the KUBRIX automatic hexahedral mesh generator

18. The meshing process creates two files: one with the extension “.wrl”; one with the
extension “.flac3d.” Browse in the directory where your STL file is located, and look for
a file with the extension “.wrl” and the same name as the STL file (i.e., “Document1.wrl,”
and read it into 3DShop. This is a VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language) file. It is
a standard format used to show three-dimensional objects.
Please note that after reading the VRML file, the Objects Explorer will contain two
documents: the first is the STL file; the second is the VRML file. Click on the document
representing the VRML file in order to activate its window.
19. If the grid lines do not appear clearly, you can increase the thickness of the lines represent-
ing the grids. In the Objects Explorer, the “.wrl” document is composed of two entities:
prim line
and prim triangle . Right-click on the prim line component, select Attributes and, in
the Attributes dialog box, select 2 for line thickness. Click on the OK buttons (Figure 1.15).

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Figure 1.15 First coarse hexahedral mesh obtained with KUBRIX

20. KUBRIX produces a coarse mesh by default. In the KUBRIX screen output in Figure 1.14,
the maximum edge length in the mesh is reported as 200. To create a finer mesh, you
need to specify a smaller maximum edge length. To do so, close the “.wrl” document,
and select the STL document so it appears on your screen.
21. Use Applications/Kubrix/Hexahedral meshing to open the Hexahedral Meshing dia-
log box. In the Mesh parameters section of the dialog box, check the square marked Max.
allowable element edge length, and enter 10. In the same section, choose a Resolution
of 3 to make sure that all details are captured with at least 3 elements across. Finally,
to ensure that the resulting grid is smooth, in the Mesh parameters section of the dialog
box, enter 1000 (instead of 6) in the Nb. of surface smoothing iterations field. Click
Compute
to launch the automatic mesh generation.
22. Upon completion of meshing, read the newly created “.wrl” file. Please note that if a
“.wrl” file of the same name is already open in 3DShop, you will have to close it before
you read a new one. The resulting mesh is shown in Figure 1.16.

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Figure 1.16 A finer hex mesh

23. To create a fully structured mesh (by definition, a structured mesh is one where all
elements can be addressed by three integers: I, J and K), activate the STL documents,
open the Hexahedral Meshing dialog box and, in the Mesh parameters section, select 3
for the Structure of the mesh, and click Compute . Close the existing “.wrl” document and
read the newly created one (Figure 1.17).

Figure 1.17 A fully structured hexahedral mesh

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1.4 Creating a Model of Both the Inside and Outside of the Excavated Shaft

24. Close all current documents and open the saved “Document1.opn.” Rotate and zoom the
model to select a view that clearly shows the opening of the shaft. Use Construction/
Extract/Edge, and your cursor symbol will change to the letter E. Move the cursor over
the outer rim of the shaft opening so it is highlighted, then left-click on it (Figure 1.18).
The extracted edge is highlighted, and a new entry called Edge3D appears in the Objects
Explorer.

Figure 1.18 The extracted edge representing the top opening of the shaft

The KUBRIX mesh generator will mesh a volume as long as it is closed. Therefore, you
must cap the shaft and create two closed volumes.
25. To create a disc bound by the edge, select the Edge3D object, and select Applications/
3dsurf/Surfaces/Fill curves. A circular disc will cap the top of the shaft, and a new
entry called Face appears in the Objects Explorer (Figure 1.19 shows the cap colored in
green). You can now delete the edge, which is no longer needed.
The model is now made of two separate volumes: one representing the excavated block;
the other, the interior of the shaft. Using File/Save, save the model as “Document2.opn.”

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Figure 1.19 The newly created disc now caps the shaft

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1.5 Creating an All-Hexahedral Mesh of the Capped Model

26. In the Objects Explorer, select the shell and the face. Use Construction/Sew to sew
the selected objects and create one single Compound3D. Select Compound3D, and use
Applications/3dmesh/Discretize to open the STL dialog box. In the Tolerance fields
located in the Discretize and Connectivity Analysis sections, enter 0.1. Enter 0.1 in the
Chord error field of the Create STL section of the dialog box. Finally, make sure that the
Remove initial object field in the Create STL section is checked. Click Create to create a
triangular surface mesh (Figure 1.20).
Please note that, in the Connectivity Analysis section of the STL dialog box, the message
Free boundaries: 0; Multiple boundaries: 1 appears, meaning that the model is no longer
that of a solid (with one single interior), but that of a non-manifold surface where the
circle representing the rim of the cap (identified as the one multiple boundary) now joins
3 surfaces: the cylinder, the cap and the top of the cube.

Figure 1.20 The triangular mesh of the block with the capped shaft

27. Click OK to accept the mesh and remove the geometry. Save the STL file as “Docu-
ment2.stl” and close the current document.
28. Open the “Document2.stl” file you just created and, using Applications/Kubrix/
Hexahedral meshing, open the Hexahedral Meshing dialog box (Figure 1.21).

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Figure 1.21 The Hexahedral Meshing dialog box

29. Click Default

to resort to default values for all parameters.
30. Enter the following values in their respective fields (Figure 1.21):
— 20 Max. allowable element edge length
— 5 Resolution
— 3 Structure of the mesh
— 1000 Nb. of surface smoothing iterations
Click Compute
to launch the computation.
31. Read the resulting “Document2.wrl” file into 3DShop to see the mesh (Figure 1.22).
Please note that the materials representing the unexcavated earth and the earth inside the
shaft are different colors. When “Document2.flac3d” is read into FLAC 3D, these two
materials will appear as group1 and group2.

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Figure 1.22 Hexahedral mesh of the capped model showing two groups

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1.6 Creating an All-Hexahedral Mesh of the Capped Model, with Stratified Soil

32. Read “Document2.opn” into 3DShop, and adopt an xz-view. As you move the cursor
around, note that its coordinates appear in the lower-right corner of the 3DShop window.
Since this is an xz-view, the value of the y-coordinate remains unchanged.
33. Using Construction/Polyline, open the Point Acquisition dialog box. To create a
horizontal line at a height of 50 ft, enter (−150, 0, 50) for X, Y and Z. Click on the upper
OK
button to confirm the first point of the polyline. Enter (150, 0, 50) for X, Y and Z,
and click on the upper and the lower OK buttons to enter the second point and close the
dialog box (Figure 1.23).

Figure 1.23 Creating a segment in order to cut the model 50 ft below the
surface

34. While in the xz-view, select the shell in the Objects Explorer or in the Graphic Window
and, using Construction/Cut, activate the Cut tool. The cursor symbol changes to the
letter E, meaning that 3DShop is looking for an edge object to perform the cut.
35. To cut the block, move your cursor over the horizontal cut line, and click on it when
it becomes highlighted (Figure 1.24). Note that there are now two shell objects in the
Objects Explorer.

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Figure 1.24 The model after the Cut operation

At this stage, the geometry definition is complete and our CAD model is ready for mesh
generation.
For the hexahedral mesh generator to understand that nodes should coincide at material
boundaries, there should be no doubled walls at material boundaries. This was not
a concern in the previous mesh generation examples, because no double walls were
created. Here, since we cut a shell in two, each shell has its own walls and, therefore,
there is a double wall at the interface of the two shells.

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1.7 Cleanup (Removing the Double Walls)

36. Save your model as “Document3.opn.” You must now have 2 shells (representing the
upper and lower soil layers) and a face (representing the cylinder cap) in your Objects
Explorer. Select both shells and, using Edit/Dissociate, dissociate the shells into their
constitutive faces. As a result, the Objects Explorer will now contain only faces.
37. To clean up double faces, select all faces in the model and, using Applications/3DMesh/
Clean, open the Clean dialog box (Figure 1.25).

Figure 1.25 The Clean dialog box

38. Enter .1 for the Tolerance; .1 is about 1/100 the size of the smallest detail in the geometry.
Click on the Analyse button. 3DShop responds that there are 15 objects and 1 double object.
Click on Clean to remove all the double faces (and edges, if need be).

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1.8 Creating an All-Hexahedral Mesh of the Stratified Soil Model

39. In the Objects Explorer, select all of the faces, sew them using Construction/Sew, and
use Applications/3dmesh/Discretize to open the STL dialog box. In the Tolerance
fields located in the Discretize and Connectivity Analysis sections, enter 0.01. Enter 0.01
for the Chord error in the Create STL section of the dialog box. Finally, make sure that
the Remove initial object field in the Create STL section is checked. Click on the Mesh
button and wait until a check mark appears next to it. Click on Manual: Analyse , and wait
until a check mark appears next to it (Figure 1.26).

Figure 1.26 The STL dialog box

40. Note that, below the Tolerance field, 3DShop says:

— Free boundaries: 0
— Multiple boundaries: 6
The fact that there are no free boundaries means that the geometry is closed. The 6
multiple boundaries are the 4 line segments splitting the 4 squares representing the block
faces, a circle resulting from cutting the cylinder wall (which you cannot see), and the
circle representing the well cap.
41. Click Create to create the surface mesh, and click OK to accept the mesh and remove the
geometry. A coarse triangular surface mesh of the model is created (Figure 1.27).

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Figure 1.27 The triangular mesh of the stratified model

42. Save the STL file, close the current document, and open the STL file you just created.
43. Select Applications/Kubrix/Hexahedral meshing to open the Hexahedral Meshing
dialog box (Figure 1.28).

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Figure 1.28 The Hexahedral Meshing dialog box

44. Click Default

to resort to default values of all parameters.
45. Enter the following values in the dialog box:
— 20 Max. allowable element edge length
— 5 Resolution
— 3 Structure of the mesh
— 1000 Nb. of surface smoothing iterations
Click Compute
to launch the mesh generation.
46. Read “Document3.wrl” (resulting from mesh generation) into 3DShop (Figure 1.29).
The lower unexcavated soil, the upper unexcavated soil and the excavated shaft appear in
3 different colors. Once “Document3.flac3d” is read into FLAC 3D, these three materials
will appear as group1, group2 and group3.

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Figure 1.29 Hexahedral mesh of the stratified and capped model showing 3
groups

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