Effects of groundwater flow on local hydraulic safety - examples with FEM

In practice, hydraulic safety is usually calculated for predefined failure mechanisms and without consideration of a soil history. The mathematical analysis of changes in effective stresses induced by groundwater flow can be related to local hydraulic safety in the considered area. For this purpose, pore water pressure distributions and effective stresses are evaluated with the FE method. In FE software, which enables calculations with pore water pressures, adjustments in post-processing are sufficient to determine local hydraulic safety level.