Hi all,
When performing seepage analysis and get the hydraulic gradients from the Plaxis 2D (purpose to calculate the factor of safety against piping or boiling effect manually), the gradient near the wall is greater than place close to it as shown below which is not possible. Why it comes like this?
=> here 2m head difference and number of equipotential drops is 10 which will give head drop in each zone as 0.2m
Thanks.
Any reply please which will help me a lot.
Dear Nitha,
I would expect that at the tip of the wall you would have the largest gradient as that is the only location the water can be directed to. Note that you are modelling a physical wall with a linear element which can result in a situation that a single point is used to show the hydraulic gradient on both sides of the wall and at its tip.
In this case, if you are interested in the flow at the tip, I would also try the same with volume elements so that I can get as close to reality as possible, provided that we refer to a wall with some thickness and not a sheet pile wall.
Answer Verified By: Nitharshan
Dear Mr. Stefanos,
Thanks for the great information so it is good to adopt volume for flow analysis.
Thanks