# Soil Profiles
Soil profiles are vertical columns through the ground which are separated into levels of strata. A new table is created for each soil profile.
Layers must be entered in order of decreasing level.
The lateral extent of each soil profile is specified later as a soil zone.
# Definition
Name
The name is a convenient way of identifying a particular soil profile.
Levels
The levels are defined in terms of the level at top of each stratum and the number of intermediate displacement levels.
Displacement levels sub-divide each layer of soil into a number of sub-layers. For example the specification of two intermediate displacement levels will divide the layer of soil into three sub-layers.
This also defines the number of stress calculation points, with depth, for the Boussinesq solution. The stresses are calculated at the centre of each sub-layer.
Soil Material Properties
The basic soil properties are the Young’s modulus & Poisson’s ratio. Where non-linear behaviour is required a non-linear soil curve can be assigned to individual layers of strata.
The pile-soil interaction property allows the selection of a pile-soil interaction property to be associated with each layer of a soil profile.
# Notes
The number of displacement levels calculated is determined as the larger of:
- a user-specified number (
) given for each soil layer - a generated number (
) taken from the Maximum Allowable Ratio ( ) between values of Young’s modulus ( ).
The value of
So for the example illustrated above, if
The value of
The value of