The choice of finite element software mainly depends on the specifications and the type of your project or problem. If you are working on an industrial project, Plaxis and Geoslope are the best software for this purpose (specially in retaining wall and soil nail modeling). If your project is an academic problem, Abaqus and FLAC are suitable and comprehensive ( FLAC is based on DEM and contains various type of constitutive models). Best regards,

Geostudio and OptumCE have student licenses. It is restrictive, but depending on what you want to do, those two software can be very useful.

Better to go with Abaqus if you have some FE analysis problem. FLAC, on the otherhand is based on finite difference method .

Abaqus is by far the most accurate of all the calculating systems out there.

I think go with FLAC or PLAXIS, they are equiped with advanced constitutive models tailored for non-linear behavior of geomaterials (soils and rocks).

PLAXIS is very good for commercial use.On the other hand OptumCE is very good for research purpose as they provide student licence with limitations of usage. Both provide with constitutive models.

Najam Wani

Based on my personal experience, if You have no experience at all in FEM simulation, I recommend PLAXIS. Their student versión though limited has good examples which will help You understand de basis of this type of analysis. In case You have some experience and knowledge about the theoretuical basis of the FEM(nodes/element type/element size/steps/etc) I recommend ABAQUS. Besides the election of the software relies on the type of engineering system You want to simulate(slopes/shallow foundation/etc).

plaxis or abaqus are fine to go with , ansys is not so easy but only for analysis is fine to get some indications , .midas GTX NX is powerful but expensive unfortunately . with my regards

Everyone has proposed excellent alternatives with their advantages and disadvantages. Perhaps, some among you would like to try an option with free software: ADONIS. It is available at http://www.geowizard.org/ I respectfully invite you all to support the author Best regards,

César Pájaro , Ahmed Suad Ali & Luis R. Vasquez-Varela thank you very much for your helpful responses.

The choice of finite element software mainly depends on the specifications and the type of your project or problem. If you are working on an industrial project, Plaxis and Geoslope are the best software for this purpose (specially in retaining wall and soil nail modeling). If your project is an academic problem, Abaqus and FLAC are suitable and comprehensive ( FLAC is based on DEM and contains various type of constitutive models). Best regards,

I recommend ABAQUS if you are working on an academic research project. For commercial use, on the other hand, PLAXIS could b a good choice. Good luck.

Saeed Talamkhani and Arian Nazeri thank you for helpful responses of yours.

Go for PLAXIS and ABAQUS.

Based on my personal experience,

I recommend PLAXIS.

It changes related with aim. Needed accuracy of solution, outputs..

For scientific purposes for instance results verification you can use abaqus or any other general FEM tools, if you need calculation for practical aims, for instance needed length of retaining wall etc you can use plaxis or flac3d etc.

We use MIDAS GTS NX here at Coventry University, UK. Having used PLAXIS 2D and 3D for many years, I would say that MIDAS is a less user friendly software in comparison with PLAXIS, but produces very detailed results and in my view more useful graphical outputs.

Sandeep Kumar Namburu , Hassan Obaid Abbas , Gokhan Altintas & Meghdad Bagheri thank you all of you for your helpful responses.

In my opinion, the mentioned software has the capacity to solve many of the conventional geotechnical problems. Some are friendlier than others, both in the input and in the outputs. However, we must not forget that the proper interpretation of the problem is not carried out by the software, it must be carried out by the geotechnician.

Dear Muneeb,

PLAXIS and FLAC these two software are well established to obtain geotechnical engineering solution. PLAXIS is finite element based and operating in window mode easy to work. FLAC is the finite difference based solution and needs to remember FISH comments. Among these two software, PLAXIS based research publication is more available than compared to FLAC. ABAQUS basically meant for mechanical engineering but after including more failure theory, now this software also used for geotechnical engineering. ABAQUS is finite element based software.ok all the best in your research..

Dear Muneeb Farooq

No doubt, just FLAC

Without delay, just FLAC

Hi firend

I sugested you better lerning Plaxis and Flac.

Have a good time

Marcelo Zeballos , Karthigeyan . S , Alireza Rashiddel & Ebrahim Sharifi Teshnizi thank you for being helpful.

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FLAC uses an explicit finite difference formulation. The question was on finite element methods. Regarding FEM, I recommend paying attention to:

1. RS from Rocscience. The extended finite element method (XFEM) and probabilistic analysis have been implemented.

2. OptumCE. Implemented adaptive finite element method, random finite element method (RFEM) (including probabilistic analysis) and limit analysis (LA).

Igor Fomenko thank you for your response. This is highly appreciated.

Dear Farooq,

In Geotechnical field, commonly 3 types of softwares say F.E.M., LEM, Finite difference methods. If you know the fundamentals behind these concepts, then we can easily choose the appropriate software for diff purposes. Using LEM software’s (Slope/w) you will know whether the Geotechnical structure is stable or not I.e. without knowing about displacements (No strain compatibility). Hence, these are used for simple problems with quick time. While, FEM software’s shall be used for both stability and to know deformations. Here, soil and rock will be Moseley’s using defined constitutive model. Bit rigorous and time consuming and used for important problem and last FDM ( FLAC) where you can choose in built constitutive models and possible to tweak and even create your own model. Hence used in research and in cases where more rigorous analysis needed.

Hope this information suffice the purpose

suresh kumar gupta Pasupula thank you a lot. This information is very much helpful.

Fei Song Thank you very much for your useful response.

Indeed, despite maybe not as user-friendly as other FEM softwares, CODE_BRIGHT (https://deca.upc.edu/en/projects/code_bright) allows to go deeper in the numerical modelling philosophy with an accurate meshing process in 2D and 3D (in terms of mesh discretization and type of finite elements to use) through the pre&post processor GiD (https://www.gidhome.com/), construction stages, as well as plenty of constitutive models availbale (some of them quite special/unique, as partially saturated soils case studies) for THM purposes. The use of high-quality numerical modelling research through CODE_BRIGHT is confirmed/justified with many journal paper publications you can find in the bibliography as reference (https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=ca&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=CODE_BRIGHT&btnG=). As an example application, one of the current areas of interest in where CODE_BRIGHT leads is the nuclear waste disposal management and repositories design with topics including gas propagation through clay materials, internal cracking evolution, material heterogeneities, etc.

It depends upon the problem you are dealing with, for example Geo slope is mostly commonly used in slope stability problems, Plaxis is mostly commonly used to simulate foundation modelling, Pile-Soil Interaction Modelling can be done easily by using ABAQUS FE models. I prefer using Plaxis and ABAQUS