Materials Overview

Material properties in RS3 are the physical and hydraulic properties of the rock or soil which make up your model. There are two basic steps required to specify the material properties for your model:

• Defining material properties
• Assigning the properties to the various regions of the model

These options are summarized below.

Define Material Properties

Material physical properties such as unit weight, strength and elastic parameters, are entered in the Material Properties dialog. If your model considers groundwater pore pressure (e.g. for effective stress analysis), then the hydraulic properties of each material are also entered in this dialog.

Assign Materials

Material properties are assigned to the various regions of your model using the Assign Materials option.

Plastic Region

You can focus on a particular area with plastic material using the Add Plastic Regions option. Oppositely, you can exclude an area from plastic behaviour using the Exclude Plastic Regions option. See the Plastic Region section for details.