Randomised properties along shaft

[Michael-P-Crisp]

Greetings,

It would be useful for research purposes, if soil layers can be represented by random fields, such as those generated by the GSTools package https://gstools.readthedocs.io/.

Would that be easy to do in the upcoming 1.0 version, for example to set soil strength on a per-spring basis? I gather it would be inefficient to define layers at say 0.2m intervals.

[TchilDill]

@Michael-P-Crisp, thank you very much for getting me introduced to GSTools.

I suggest we first wait for v1.0, since I have delayed the release of this version quite a lot already due to other things. Then, depending on your response and maybe others interested in this, we could look further into it.

I agree that creating a layer every 0.2m is not that fun for user experience, but the ugliness is very much dependent on your implementation, for instance you could do something like this, which would randomise the undrained shear strength property along the pile:

#imports
from openpile.soilmodels import API_clay
from openpile.construct import SoilProfile, Layer
import numpy as np

#define soil discretisation
nodes = np.linspace(0.,-30.,50)
top = nodes[:-1]
bottom = nodes[1:]

# a random undrained shear strength, very much 'attracted' to 30kPa though :)
random_params = 30+np.random.randn(nodes.size)

# a nice list comprehension to define all your layers
layers = [
    Layer(name='',top=t, bottom=b, weight=17, lateral_model=API_clay(Su=x, eps50=0.01)) 
    for t,b, x in zip(top, bottom, random_params)
    ]

# visualise what it looks like
sp = SoilProfile(name='Randomised properties along shaft #36', top_elevation=0,water_line=-5,layers=layers)
sp.plot()

resulting in: