ITASCA Software services

Our paid project support services are ideal for those seeking comprehensive project assistance and a higher level of engagement from or team.

Itasca’s finite volume (FV) approach uses the shear strength reduction (SSR) method for numerical modeling. This formulation is far superior to more traditional limit equilibrium (LE) methods and offers several advantages over finite element (FE) methods as well.

Itasca is particularly well-known for examining complex problems involving slope instabilities in soil and rock. One specialty is assessment of slope stability and design on scales ranging from civil engineering slopes in soil and rock, including portals, to mine benches and inter-ramps for many of the world’s largest open-pit mines. Another is analysis of both the static and dynamic stability of waste dumps, leach piles, and tailings dams. Itasca’s roles include slope design, instrumentation, remediation, and back-analysis. Itasca’s software provides realistic deformations and failure mechanisms (including multiple failure modes), enabling Service Limit State and Ultimate Limit State analyses as well as Factor of Safety analyses. Numerical analyses can also take construction stages into account and many material models are available to represent a wide variety of soil and rock for realistic behaviors for both static and dynamic conditions, including liquefaction.

Transportation infrastructure represents the arteries of modern civilization. Itasca provides engineering and research services for nearly all aspects of transportation infrastructure.

Itasca has provided analysis of nearly all types of retaining structures, including slurry-supported reinforced concrete diaphragm walls, sheet pile walls, soil-nailed walls, and tieback walls. As with dams, water pressure acting within the soil mass is often a key issue. The ability to predict water pressures is an important element in understanding the behavior of retaining structures. Itasca analyzes flow through soil and uses the resultant pore pressures to determine effective stresses so that these can be applied in the constitutive models.

Experience in foundations includes application of Itasca’s software to problems where existing techniques are either unavailable or are known to be inaccurate. For example, FLAC3D was used to determine the subgrade reaction modulus for a thick concrete slab placed over fill with varying thickness. In another case, an industrial machine produced a cyclic vibration. The effect of the vibration on nearby foundations supporting other machinery was studied dynamically by applying the cyclic loading to one location and measuring the vibration levels at other locations. A similar study was performed to evaluate the dynamic effects on nearby buildings due to trains running in subway tunnels at a shallow depth. Various remedial measures were evaluated numerically before selecting the recommended solution.

Itasca has over 20 years of experience in applying seismology to a wide range of engineering applications, allowing engineers to non-destructively monitor structure health and integrity and locate areas of weakness.