The geotechnical analysis is carried out for solids consisting of soil materials. To define them, create the corresponding materials in the basic objects. The material properties affect the stiffnesses of these objects.
A new material is created in the RFEM 6 program as described in the chapter Materials of the corresponding manual. The following image shows an example of the dialog box for entering the properties of a soil material.
Main
Within the geotechnical analysis, the specific entries described below must be considered for the definition of soil material.
Material Type
Select "Soil" as the type of material.
Material Model
For the "Soil" material type, specific material laws or material models suitable for the simulation of the soil behavior are implemented in the Geotechnical Analysis add-on.
The available material models are listed in the partial view of the "Edit Material" dialog box shown below.
User-defined material
Basic Material Properties
In the "Edit Material" dialog box, you can enter the basic material properties as characteristic values on the right side of the "Main" tab. This can be entered manually or by importing a soil material from the material library. Further information can be found in the corresponding chapter for the Material Library of the online manual for RFEM 6.
After importing the soil material from the material library (if applicable), you should adjust the properties according to the project-specific specifications.
For materials of the Soil type, you have to define two values for the specific weight depending on the water content. Specify the specific weight of the "Wet" soil and the "Saturated" soil saturated with water.
Isotropic | Soil | Plastic | Modified Hardening Soil
This tab appears when the Modified Hardening Soil model has been selected as the material model. This is where the specific parameters for this material model are entered. This section is described in the subchapter Input - Modified Hardening Soil Model.
Isotropic | Soil | Plastic | Modified Mohr-Coulomb
This tab appears when the Modified Mohr-Coulomb model has been selected as the material model. This is where the specific parameters for this material model are entered. This section is described in the subchapter Input - Modified Mohr-Coulomb Model.
Isotropic | Soil | Nonlinear elastic
This tab appears when the Nonlinear Elastic model has been selected as the material model. This is where the specific parameters for this material model are entered. This section is described in the subchapter Input - Nonlinear Elastic Model.
Isotropic | Rock | Plastic | Hoek-Brown
This tab appears when the Hoek-Brown model has been selected as material model. This is where the specific parameters for this material model are entered. This section is described in the subchapter Input - Hoek-Brown Model.
Material Properties
The Material Values tab is displayed by default for materials imported from the library.
Stiffness Modification
The Stiffness Modification tab is available by default for materials for which the User-defined material option is activated. No input is required here for the definition of soil materials.