User Guide

1. The program allows for easy meshing and for doing linear or nonlinear analysis (using the finite element code CYCLIC).

2. It has built-in soil modeling parameters for soft to stiff clays and loose to dense sands. All a user has to do is pick the soil they want from a menu. Others can be added, and user-defined parameters can be also accessed by interested users.

3. Click "Earthdam Parameters" to change the geometry of the earthdam. After any change, click ok, then click the button with a "G" to generate the new mesh.

4. Click the button "Foundation Horizontal Meshing" to refine your mesh in the horizontal direction. After any change, click ok, then click the button with a "G" to generate the new mesh.

5. Click the button "Soil Strata" to to change the foundation soil configuration. If you do not want a liquefaction analysis conducted, please un-check the box. After any change, click ok, then click the button with a "G" to generate the new mesh.

6. When reservoir full is selected. Water is added on the right side of the figure, and water level is at height of the dam core section.

7. Choose from the current small menu of input motions. You can scale these motions, and also change frequency and number of cycles of the sinusoidal excitation. The U-shake motion will allow you to use any motion you provide from an external file.

8. Under "Analyze", the analysis option allows for selecting linear or nonlinear analysis. It also allows modifying the viscous damping as a function of frequency (Rayleigh damping...). Please do some linear analyses first because these run quickly and demonstrate some capabilities of the output phase.

9. Under "meshing" you can see the filled and un-filled mesh view.

10. When ready, under "Analyze" click save model and run analysis. This will save a data file with the properties you chose (which you can select at a later time to work with again). It will then start the run. Conversely, you can click on the Arrow button to run the program.

11. When the run is complete, output will be displayed. Please choose options from the "view" and "@Location" drop menus (more can be easily added later). Note that you can zoom on any section of these figures,and you can download the text file for use in an external program or file. We are working on an interface to make a Word file containing all figures that a user selects automatically (for report preparation purposes).

12. Under "Display" you can choose "deformed mesh" which will play an animation of the response. Delay will slow down the animation (or speed it up), and "scale factor" will increase the scale of deformations for clarity. The drop-down menu allows displaying vectors, contours, x-displacement, or y-displacements (we can add more output capabilities). You can also click on the time bar slider (left click) and move it manually to observe the progress of deformation.

13. In the Windows "Finite Element Mesh" and "Deformed Mesh", use F9 and F10 to zoom and up and down arrows to move (see Menu "View").

We really appreciate any feedback.