Define Materials

To define material properties, select Define Materials from the toolbar or the Materials menu.

Materials List

In the Materials List, all currently defined materials are listed. The material being edited is highlighted. You can:

• Add a new material by clicking the Add icon
• Delete a new material by clicking the Delete icon
• Show only the materials that are assigned to the slope by clicking the Filter icon
  
• To copy the values of the selected property to another property, click the Copy icon

Material Name

The Material Name entered should be meaningful and can be easily associated with the rock or soil type being modelled (e.g. "Granite" instead of "Rock1").

Material Colour

The Material Colour option allows for the selection of a unique colour for each material in the 3D model.

Lose All Kinetic Energy on Contact

When selected, the material is assumed to be fully damping, meaning that any rock contact would immediately cancel the rock's kinetic energy and stop the rock. This is a simplified approach for modelling complete energy loss on rock-slope contact, and no other parameter input would be required in the dialog (i.e., all other fields would become disabled when the user selects Lose All Kinetic Energy on Contact). This option may be used to model rock contact with a water body or a highly damping material. As the rock stops under any circumstance when in contact with this material, this option may be unrealistic in some cases (e.g., overhangs).

Basic Contact

In the Basic Contact tab of the Define Material Properties dialog, users may input values for the basic parameters required for calculating rock-slope contacts (i.e., impacts, sliding, and rolling). A statistical distribution may be assigned to each parameter. For more information, see the Statistics page.

For Lump Mass analysis, the basic contact parameters are:

• Normal restitution coefficient
• Tangential restitution coefficient
• Friction angle

For Rigid Body analysis, the basic contact parameters are:

• Normal restitution coefficient
• Dynamic friction coefficient

Users may reference typical values of the above parameters via the Common Types material library .