Introduction

Pore-water pressures impose one of the greatest controls on the stability of slopes. The porewater pressure can be defined in a SLOPE/W analysis using a variety of approaches including a piezometric line, spatial pressure head function, or a finite element analysis. A finite element analysis provides the most flexibility and rigor; however, a spatial function can be useful for modeling pore-water pressure distributions that cannot be handled by a simple piezometric line(s).

This example illustrates how to set-up and interpret the results of a SLOPE/W analysis that uses spatial pressure head function