Tensile Strength

In the Define Material Properties dialog, a Tensile Strength can be defined for the following strength models:

• Mohr-Coulomb
• Undrained (Phi = 0)
• Anisotropic Strength
• Anisotropic Function
• Vertical Stress Ratio
• Discrete Function
• Anisotropic Linear
• SHANSEP

To define a Tensile Strength:

1. Select one of the above strength models.
2. Select the Tensile Strength checkbox and enter a value.

The Tensile Strength option can be very useful for models which exhibit tensile forces between slices or on the base of slices. Large tensile forces in limit equilibrium slope stability analysis usually lead to incorrect solutions and/or numerical problems, and should generally be avoided.

The Tensile Strength option can be used to automatically eliminate tensile forces by adjusting the local factor of safety on a slice, so that the effective normal stress is zero on the base of the slice.