The geotechnical analysis is carried out for volumes consisting of soil materials. In order to define these, appropriate materials must be created in the basic objects. The material properties affect the stiffnesses of these objects.
A new material is created in the program RFEM 6, as described in chapter rfem-6/000034 Materials of the corresponding manual. The following figure shows an example of the dialog box for entering the characteristic values of a soil material.
Base
In the context of the geotechnical analysis, the specific inputs explained below for the definition of soil material must be observed.
Material type
Select "Soil" for the type of material.
Material Model
For the "Soil" material type, specific material laws or material models are implemented in the Geotechnical Analysis add-on.
The available material models are listed in the section shown below from the "Edit material" dialog box.
User-defined material
Basic Material Properties
In the "Edit material" dialog box, enter the basic material parameters as characteristic values on the right-hand side of the "Basic" tab. This can be done manually or by importing a soil material from the material library. Further information can be found in the corresponding chapter on Material Library of the online manual for RFEM 6.
After importing a soil material from the material library, the characteristic values should be adjusted according to the project-specific specifications.
For materials of the soil type, two values must be defined to define the specific weight depending on the water content. Specify the specific gravity of the "Moist" soil and the "Saturated" soil.
Isotropic | Soil | Plastic | Modified Mohr-Coulomb
This tab appears if the modified Mohr-Coulomb model has been selected as the material model. Here you can enter specific parameters for this material model. This section is described in subsection Input - Modified Mohr-Coulomb Model .
Isotropic | Soil | Nonlinear elastic
This tab appears if the nonlinear elastic model has been selected as the material model. Here you can enter specific parameters for this material model. This section is described in subsection Input - Nonlinear Elastic Model .
Material Properties
The Material Values tab is displayed by default for information about materials imported from the library.
Stiffness modification
The Stiffness Modification tab is offered by default for materials whose User-Defined Material option is activated. No input is required here for the definition of soil materials.