Introduction

Excess pore-water pressures can develop in saturated or nearly saturated soils of sufficiently low hydraulic conductivity during relatively rapid construction or due to the placement of a load at the ground surface. This occurs because the fluid in the pore space inhibits the volumetric strain necessary to transfer the load to the soil skeleton. The development of excess porewater pressure can be modeled in SLOPE/W using a variety of approaches including a spatial pressure head function, finite element pore-water pressures from a coupled SIGMA/W analysis, or the use of Skempton’s B-Bar. The latter approach is the most straightforward and does not require a finite element analysis. This example demonstrates how to set-up and interpret the results for a SLOPE/W analysis using the B-bar pore-water pressure definition.