Examine2D 7.0

Article prepared forRocNews Winter 2007

20th Anniversary for Examine2D

. . . a new release . . . and it’s free! On the 20th anniversary of the original development of Examine2D, Rocscience is proud to

release a new and greatly improved version of the software. Developed as an educational

tool for both practicing engineers and students, its intent is to expand the use of stress

analysis in rock engineering.

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The software tries to achieve this

goal by making it easy for the

engineer to understand the basic

principles of stress analysis and

its application to the modeling of

underground excavations in rock.

In order to facilitate this educational

process, Rocscience has released

the software, free of charge, to

the engineering and educational

community.

20 Years of History

Examine2D started out over 20

years ago as a research project at

the University of Toronto. Lead by

Professor John Curran, its purpose

was to develop software to calculate

stresses around underground

mining excavations. Using funding

provided by the Mining Technology

Division, Centre de Technologie,

Noranda and the Ontario University

Research Incentive Fund, a

FORTRAN program called Mine5

was written by a graduate student

of Professor Curran’s, Sinnathamby

Sathiamoorthy.

Major principal stress around two power caverns

It soon became apparent that to

use Mine5 on practical mining

problems, a simple and easy-to-use

method for entering the geometry

and material properties must also

be developed. Using AutoCAD™

Release 9, and AutoLISP™, an

interface was developed to enter

geometry. This AutoCAD™ add-on

program was the very first version of

Examine2D.

The Rock

Engineering

Group first

developed and

distributed

early software-

versions as

shareware in

Canada and

internationally.

Although very good for entering

data, AutoCAD™ Release 9

proved less than adequate for the

visualization of the stress analysis

results. A crude add-on would

typically take over an hour to

render a typical display of stress

contours around an underground

excavation. This lead to a rethinking

of the interface structure, both pre-

processing and post-processing, and

the decision to create an integrated

self-contained software package.

This package, completely written

in the programming language

Stress trajectories around a power cavern and transformer gallery

C, would later become the DOS

version of Examine2D that most

people are now familiar with.

At the same time, the Rock

Engineering Group, lead by

Professor Evert Hoek and Professor

John Curran, was established at

the University of Toronto. This

group and its focus on practical

rock engineering problems is what

instigated the initial development

of many of the software codes

distributed by Rocscience today

(Dips, Phases, Unwedge, Swedge,

RocData, Examine2D, Examine3D).

The first of these codes was

Examine2D. Written in 1987, by

(then) graduate students Brent

Corkum, Joe Carvalho, and Mark

Diederichs, using Borland Turbo

C, a completely integrated CAD

interface, boundary element engine,

and data visualization/interpretation

program was developed for the DOS

PC platform. Examine2D ran under

the DOS 640KB memory restriction,

on PC AT/386 hardware using either

a CGA, VGA or Hercules graphics

adapter. The Examine2D interface

and development process would

form the basis of all the future

programs developed by the Rock

Engineering Group.

As an educational

tool, Examine2D

is part of the

Rocscience

Education

Program, used

by more than

100 universities

around the world.

Displacements around a modified horseshoe shaped tunnel

Over the next 20 years, Examine2D

would continue to be used by

engineers and educators around the

world, particularly as an educational

tool to help teach basic stress

analysis to students and starting

engineers. Its use in practical rock

engineering excavation design

would be overshadowed by the

finite-element program Phases

and its successor, Phase2. Although

quick and easy to use, Examine2D

has the limitation of only being able

to model a single material with an

elastic constitutive model. Phase2

can model multiple materials with

plastic material behavior, staging,

and support.

Examine2D 7.0

In the design of underground

structures, very sophisticated stress

analysis tools are now routinely

available to an engineer. However,

these tools are only useful if the

engineer has a basic understanding

of stress analysis and how stress and

displacement distributions around

excavations are influenced by

factors such as excavation shape, far

field stresses, excavation proximity,

and material properties. In order

to increase the understanding of

these issues by today’s engineers,

educational tools are needed that

allow students and engineers to

quickly and easily manipulate

model parameters, and in real-

time, visualize the effect on a stress

analysis.

To meet this need, Rocscience

has developed a new version of

Examine2D, which makes it easy for

a student or engineer to visualize

the effect of excavation shape, far

field stress, excavation proximity

and material properties. In real-time,

Graph of major principal stress on the boundary of a circular tunnel

users can change the shape of an

excavation, drag entire excavations,

and manipulate far field stresses. In

real-time, the contours and graphs

of stresses and displacements will

be updated to show the influence of

these changes.

Along with these capabilities,

Examine2D can also do much more.

We’ve added all the Rocscience

tools that people have become

accustomed to. You can annotate

your model using drawing tools

such as text, dimensioning tools,

polylines, polygons, etc. A report

generator allows you to easily print

results for engineering reports or

assignments. Graphing tools exist

for plotting graphs of stress and

displacement data anywhere in

your model. You can export graphs

and data directly to Microsoft

Excel™ using built-in automation.

You can create a model using the

built-in CAD tools, or bring in the

geometry from an AutoCAD DXF file

or a coordinate list from Microsoft

Excel™. The program also supports

imperial and metric unit systems,

Mohr-Coulomb and the latest

Generalized Hoek-Brown failure

criteria, plane strain or complete

plane strain analyses, isotropic or

anisotropic elastic material models,

and constant or gravitational far

field stresses.

Examine2D Report generator

Info viewer textual display of project information

For more information on Examine2D and its capabilities, or to download a free copy of the

software, visit the Examine2D Product Page on the Rocscience website.