Chapter 9

NUMERICAL OUTPUT FILES

In addition to Coulomb’s internal graphics, you may want to analyse or plot the underlying numerical output, so all Coulomb graphics calculations produce a numerical output file with useful headers. These can be opened in Excel or brought into a rasterizing program for replotting.

9.1 Map view displacement output file

Every time when you click “Cal. & View” in the Displacement control panel, a text output file called “Displacement.cou” will be created or updated and saved in the sub-folder you designated in the Coulomb preferences menu (the default is ‘output_files’). When you want to save your latest runs, remember to rename the “Displacement.cou” file within the “Output files” sub-folder; otherwise it will be overwritten by your future calculations. Here is an example of “Displacement.cou” text output file.

9.2 Map view strain output file

Every time when you click “Cal. & View” in the Strain control panel, a text output file called “strain.cou” will be created or updated and saved in a sub-folder called “output files” within the “Coulomb 3.1 folder”. When you want to save your latest runs, remember to rename the “strain.cou” file within the “output files” sub-folder; otherwise it will be written over by your future displacement calculations. Following is an example of “strain.cou” text output file.

9.3 Cross-section dilatation output file

When you click “Cal. & View” in the Strain control panel, and have selected the ‘Dilatation cross section’ option, a text output file called “dilatation_section.cou” will be created or updated and saved in the sub-folder.

9.4 Map view Coulomb stress output file

Every time when you click “Cal. & View” in the Stress control panel, a text output file called “dcff.cou” will be created or updated and saved. ‘Dcff’ is an abbreviation for the change in the Coulomb failure function. When you want to save your latest runs, remember to rename the “dcff.cou” file within the “Output files” sub-folder ; otherwise it will be written over by your future calculations. Following is an example of “dcff.cou” text output file.

9.5 Cross-section Coulomb stress output file

Every time when you click “Calc. & View” in the Cross section control panel, a text output file called “dcff_section.cou” will be created or updated. Remember to rename it if you want to save the latest cross section run since “dcff_section.cou” will be overwritten. The following is an example of “dcff_section.cou” text output file.

9.6 Element Conditions stress output file for ‘Calc. stress on faults’ option

Every time when you select ‘Calc. stress on faults’, Coulomb produces a ‘Element_conditions.csv’ file with the results in tabular form. It includes not only the specified rake you selected for the calculation, but also the maximum (most positive) Coulomb stress change and the associated rake for this maxima.

9.7 Numerical output file for Focal mechanism calculations, Focal_mech_stress.csv.

Here is sample output of the focal mechanism file; you will see that it contains considerably more information than is contained in the graphical output.