Software Products

Faster Performance

• Significant improvements in performance
• Up to 3x faster calculations for balls and clumps
• Up to 20% faster calculations for rigid blocks

• Finer control over contact detection for decreasing granular flow simulation times
• Speed up property assignment command for contacts
• Cutting logic – same as in 3DEC but >10x faster.
• Speed up cutting with fractures by a factor of 4
• Speed up rigid block brick replication by a few orders of magnitude
• Speed up wall creation when many walls
• Ball and rigid block clumps now work with the BRICK logic

New and Improved User Interface

User Interface

The most apparent change with PFC Version 9 is the new user interface (UI). It's designed to be flexible, fit the way you work, and have more efficient plotting. Rather than fixed layouts, dynamically add what you want, where you want it, by splitting new windows (horizontally or vertically) in the work space. The UI is organized into the following:

1. Main Menu.
2. Project pane to view associated files, sets, and plots.
3. Command Console to input or view model commands and see model output or program messages (information/warnings/errors)
4. Content Workspace for creating new and editing existing (a) data files and (b) plots.
5. Contextual Tools/Help panel which changes depending on what has focus.
6. Layout Toggles to hide and show the the Project pane, Workspace, or Command Console.
7. Status bar.

Project Tile

• Visualization and querying of all model components via a collapsible tree.
• Shows information about balls, contacts, geometries, etc.
• You can drill down for more detailed information and automatically generate plots of the different items.

New Contact Model

Subspring Network Contact Model

• More accurate version of the Spring Network Model
• Includes sub-contacts for resisting rotation and providing more realistic behavior
• Tunnel example included
• Rigid Block Spring Network model allows you to specify Young’s modulus and Poisson’s Ratio
• No calibration of elastic properties
• More homogeneous deformation
• Subspring Network yields results very similar to 3DEC (deformable elastic blocks)
• Calculations 3-10x faster than equivalent 3DEC models

Improvements to Rigid Blocks

• Add the configure bbm command for rblocks to make Bonded Block Models (BBM) easier to use
• Make quad faces at splitting, when possible, for rigid blocks
• Allow the boundaries to be accounted for when making Voronoi tessellations
• Add tetrahedral (3D) and triangle (2D) densification
• Add the rblock reflect command
• Do not allow rblocks with aspect ratio greater than 100,000
• Added combined damping for rigid blocks
• Added support for setting contact gaps consistent with stress and strength for rigid blocks
• See the INSTALL-GAPS command
• Added fictitious rounding support for rblock-facet contacts
• Ball and RBlock clumps now work with the BRICK logic
• Added the RBLOCK-FACET-TOLERANCE keyword for rblock-facet contacts

Non-linear Structural Elements

PFC 9 adds new non-linear structural elements for ground support for beams and piles/rockbolts and for shells, geogrids, and liners. Simple plastic hinges have been supplemented with a numerical integration scheme.

BEAM-TYPE STRUCTURES

• The beam-type plastic constitutive models update the internal element forces by integrating the internal stress over the beam volume using a numerical integration scheme.
• The plasticity is induced by axial and bending deformations; twisting deformation induces an elastic response.
• The beam may have either a rectangular or circular cross section.
• Integration points are distributed throughout the volume of the beam elements.
• There are three beam plastic constitutive models, each of which is a one-dimensional version of the corresponding 3D model used by the zones:
  • von Mises (steel beams)
  • Mohr Coulomb (concrete beams)
  • Strain Softening/Hardening Mohr Coulomb (concrete beams)

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SHELL-TYPE STRUCTURES

• The plastic constitutive models update the internal element forces by integrating the internal stress over the shell volume using a numerical integration scheme.
• There are a group of integration points distributed throughout the volume of each shell element.
• There are three shell plastic constitutive models, each of which is a plane-stress version of the corresponding 3D model used by the zones:
  • von Mises (steel shells)
  • Mohr Coulomb (concrete shells)
  • Strain Softening/Hardening Mohr Coulomb (concrete shells)
• Plasticity is provided by the DKT, CST and DKT-CST finite elements.

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Improved Scripting

• Updated version of Python
• Added the contact.vel and contact.spin FISH intrinsic

And More ...

• Modifications to support outputting to a grid file
• Add position keyword to find contact for history
• Track ball-facet contacts
• Added sn_states property
• Added group-both to by-face and by-slot
• Bring create-on-overlap to all contact types
• Added the ball, clump, wall, and rblock remap-interval commands
• Added contact fixity
• Improved Handling of null and un-null of FLAC zones
• Added the unbalanced apply condition
• Added range to the contact creation command.
• Improved performance of wall-zone logic when attaches are present
• New examples:
  • Tunnel model using the new Sub-spring Network Contact Model
  • Finer control over contact detection for decreasing granular flow simulation times