MohrPlotter v. 2.

Richard W. Allmendinger © 2014-2015

The user assumes any and all risks associated with the use of this pro-
gram. While I have made every effort to ensure that the program is as
free of bugs as possible, all programs have bugs and this one is no differ-
ent. The author cannot be held responsible for any direct or indirect dam-
ages resulting from the use of this software, including incorrect or mis-
leading use of the results or inappropriate uses of the software. This
software was written as a teaching device and is not intended to be used
in any situation where the results will be used in any commercial or non-
commercial application where human lives or property are at stake.

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 Contents
Introduction!.....................................................................................................................3

Basic Use!........................................................................................................................3

Calculation Menu!............................................................................................................4

Enter as Tensor!.....................................................................................................................................4

Enter as Tensor — Advanced Usage!..................................................................................................5

Failure By…!...........................................................................................................................................6

Reactivation Angles!.............................................................................................................................6

Principal Stress from Planes!...............................................................................................................7

Add Plane!..............................................................................................................................................7

Clear Planes!..........................................................................................................................................8

Plot Menu!.........................................................................................................................8

The Inspector — Controlling the Plot Appearance!.....................................................8

Opening, Saving and Importing!....................................................................................9

Saving you analysis for later use!........................................................................................................9

Open Analysis!....................................................................................................................................10

Import Planes!.....................................................................................................................................10

Saving Your Plot for Use Elsewhere!.................................................................................................10

References Cited!..........................................................................................................12

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Introduction
!There are many excellent references to the use of Mohrs Circle for stress; see any
good structure textbook (Jaeger and Cook, 1979; Suppe, 1985; Fossen, 2010; e.g.,
Allmendinger et al., 2012).

Basic Use
MohrPlotter was designed
to be a simple and straightfor-
ward to use as possible. All of the
elements needed to produce a
basic Mohr diagram are available
directly in the panel on the right
hand side of the main window.
One enters the principal stresses
and pore fluid pressure in the
group box at the top of the panel.
If you leave the σ2 value blank,
you will get a traditional 2D
Mohrs Circle which plots the
normal and shear stress on planes parallel to σ2. Pore fluid pressure can be varied in
increments of 0.5 with the up and down arrows on the right side of the text box.
In the middle group box you enter the components necessary to define failure
envelopes, both for Griffith-Coulomb and for frictional slip on pre-existing fractures.
Friction values can either be entered as angles or as coefficients (tangents of angles) by
using the popup menus in the box. The cohesion is automatically constrained to be
twice the absolute value of the tensile strength and vice versa.
Finally, in the lowest group box, you can plot the normal and shear stress on up
to three planes by specifying the angles that the poles to the planes make with σ1 (al-
pha), σ2 (beta), and σ3 (gamma). These angle are not independent; when you enter two,
the third angle is calculated for you. For a traditional 2D Mohr Circle, set the angle with
respect to σ2 = 90°. If your plane is parallel to one of the principal axes of stress, the
normal and shear stress will lie on one of the three circles and a line will be drawn to the
center of the circle on which the point lies.
The coordinates of the cursor in the plot are shown in the text field beneath the
plot area on the left. Clicking and dragging in the window will allow you to measure
angles. In the text field below the diagram to the right, you will see the principal stress
ratio, R:

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 σ 2 −σ1 ⎛ σ −σ 3 ⎞
R= = 1− Φ = 1− ⎜ 2
σ 3 −σ1 ⎝ σ 1 − σ 3 ⎟⎠

When I = 0, σ2 = σ1 and when R = 1, σ2 = σ3. The parameter R is used by Gephart in his

inversion of faults for best-fitting stress tensor (Gephart and Forsyth, 1984; Gephart,
1990), whereas the parameter Φ is used by Angelier and others (1984). The principal
stress ratio was first described by Bott (1959).
The same text field where R is shown will also show the normal and shear stress
on the plane shown in the popup menu in the planes group box.

Calculation Menu!
Enter as Tensor
By choosing Calculate>Enter
as Tensor, you can specify the state
of stress by entering the full stress
tensor, rather than entering the
principal stresses. The dialog box
shown to the right will be displayed and you
can type in the values of the component of
the tensor. The stress tensor is symmetric so
the three values below the principal diagonal
will be entered for you automatically. The
position in the matrix depends on your coor-
dinate system. For example, if you are using
a North-East-Down (NED) coordinate sys-
tem, then the first row of the matrix in the
example at the right contains the normal (σ11
= 22) and shear (σ12 = 14, σ13 = –10) stresses
on a plane that is perpendicular to the North
axis. When you press the Calculate button,
MohrPlotter will calculate the eigenvalues
(i.e., principal stresses) and eigenvectors (i.e.,
the orientations of the principal stresses in
the coordinate system) enter them into the
appropriate fields in the main window. The
program will also assume your coordinates

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are NED and will calculate the trend and plunge of the principal axes. See the next sec-
tion for more information about coordinate systems. As you can see in the figure on the
previous page, the program will also calculate the invariants of the stress tensor. The
three planes plotted in the main window are the three planes that are perpendicular to
the three axes of your coordinate system.

Enter as Tensor — Advanced Usage

The Enter as tensor win-
dow contains quit a lot of addi-
tional power. First, by clicking
the “Principal Stress Format”
tab, you can enter principal
stresses in geographic coordi-
nates and the program will
automatically calculate the ten-
sor format in the geographic co-
ordinate system and place in in
the tensor format tab. Note that
you completely specify the ori-
entation of one axis — set by the
popup menu to the left — and
the trend of the second axis. As
all three principal axes must be
mutually orthogonal, the program will calculate the rest of the orientations and place
them all in the Principal Axes listbox below the calculate button.
Second, if you toggle the small disclosure triangle at the top part of the window,
you will get a stereonet view of the three principal axes (see above figure). Changing the
Coordinate System of the tensor does not affect the matrix in the tensor format but does
change the orientations of the principal axes. When you first enter a tensor or principal
axes, the three planes depicted in the stereonet view and on the Mohr’s Circle are the
three principal planes with are orthogonal to the principal stresses.
Third, once the tensor has been calculated so that the program knows what the
coordinate system is, you can edit the orientations of the planes in the listbox below the
stereonet. These edited planes are plotted in both the Stereonet view and the Mohr Cir-
cle view. In the latter you can see the normal and shear stress on the planes by selecting
it from the popup menu under Poles to Planes. These planes will remain active until
you choose Calculate>Clear Planes.

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Failure By…
MohrPlotter can cal-
culate how much you need
to change the stress in oder
to produce failure (intersec-
tion with the Griffith-
Coulomb failure envelope)
by increasing pore fluid
pressure (i.e., hydraulic
fracturing), increasing σ1,
or decreasing σ3. The new
value for these quantities
will be placed into the ap-
propriate text field so you
can see the exact value. In
the example at the right, the pore fluid pressure was raised by 17.354 stress units in or-
der to produce fracture.
Whenever you introduce pore fluid pressure (regardless of whether it is sufficient
to produce fracture), MohrPlotter by default shows a ghost image of the stress state
without pore fluid pressure in the background. This image can be turned off by setting
the opacity to 0 with the appropriate slider in the Inspector window. Likewise, you can
change the color of the pore-pressure affected Mohrs Circles in the Inspector.

Reactivation Angles
If you have entered data to
define the failure envelope for pre-
existing fractures where the cohe-
sion is zero, then Mohr plotter can
calculate the orientations of planes
(if any) that will be reactivated. The
angles shown in the dialog box are
between the pole to the plane and
the greatest principal stress, σ1. The
program will only give the angles that
pertain to planes that are parallel to one of the three principal stresses. One can, of
course, make the same measurement manually by clicking on the circle center and
dragging a line to the point on the circle and dividing by two. If you select Reactivation
Angles from the Plot Menu, the lines will be drawn from the center of the circle, show-
ing the range of plane orientations that might be reactivated.

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Principal Stress from Planes
If you know the shear and nor-
mal stress on any two planes in a body
that are parallel to σ2, the principal
stresses can be calculated. The inter-
face for entering the two planes is
shown to the right. All you enter is the
shear and normal stress magnitudes
for the two planes. The rest of the in-
formation — angle of the pole with re-
spect to σ1, σ1 and σ3 magnitudes —
are calculated dynamically as soon as
there is enough information. When
you press Okay, the principal stresses
will automatically replace whatever
you currently have plotted in the Mohr
Circle Window. You can have the two planes plotted to the Mohr diagram by checking
the appropriate checkbox. If you just want to do the calculation without plotting any-
thing, press Cancel when you are done.

Add Plane
Mohr Plotter can calculate and display the stresses on any number of planes,
which can be added in a variety of ways. If the Mohr Circle Window is in front and ac-
tive, choosing Calculations>Add Plane will increment the total number of planes and
select the “σ1 angle = “ text box in Poles to Planes section, waiting for you to define the
orientation of the new plane with respect to the principal stresses (i.e., in the principal
stress coordinate system). Alternatively, you can add a new plane by pulling down the
pop-down menu beneath “Poles to Planes” and selecting “Add Plane” from the top of
the menu.
If the Tensor Window is in front and active, then choosing Calculations>Add
Plane will increment the total number of planes and add a new row to the listbox be-
neath the stereonet view. You will then be able to enter a new plane by specifying its
strike and dip in right hand rule (i.e., in a geographic coordinate system).
Planes can also be entered by reading a text file (File>Import Planes) of strikes
and dips with a tab character between each value, one orientation per row. MohrPlotter
ignores the first line which assumes to be a header line. This is the type of file written
automatically by Stereonet when you choose File>Export Text File>Stereonet 6 Format
in that program.

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Clear Planes
Wipes out all entered planes and start over.

Plot Menu
This is where you control the appearance
of the two types of plots that MohrPlotter can
do. Choosing a menu option will place a check-
mark next to it and will turn on the plotting of
that feature. Choosing the same option again
will remove the checkmark and turn off that fea-
ture. In general, options are disabled (grayed
out) if that plotting option does not apply to the
active (i.e., front) window. For example, in the
screen grab of the menu to the right, the failure
envelop options are turned off because the Ten-
sor Window was in front, and thus the various stereonet options that apply to the plot
in that window are enabled.
The one submenu that applies to both windows is the Stress on Plane submenu.
It is here that you turn on or off individual planes. There is a separate menu option for
each plane that has been entered so, if you have entered a lot of planes you will see a
very long submenu! In that case, the two options at the top of that submenu should be
of use to you: Plot All and Plot None. It is far easier to turn off all of the planes and then
turn on just the few that you want to isolate than it is to toggle off each plane individu-
ally.
In the Mohr Circle window, a plane can be selected by clicking on the dot that
represents the normal and shear stress on that plane. Likewise, planes can be selected
by clicking on one or more planes in the listbox beneath the stereonet plot of the Tensor
Window. Selected planes are highlighted in both plots simultaneously with a yellow
halo behind the point/great circle.

The Inspector — Controlling the Plot Appearance

The Inspector, accessible from the Window Menu, is where you control the look
of your plot. Most of the entries in the Inspector are self explanatory. To set the appear-
ance of the three circles in the Mohr construction, select the circle you want from the
popup menu in the circles group box. The bottom choice, “Effective Stress Circles is
where you control the appearance of the circle(s) with pore fluid pressure and where
you set the opacity of the “ghost circles” representing the stress state without pore fluid
pressure.

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 In the Envelopes & points tab, if you check the
“highlight plane” checkbox, the program will highlight
the plane selected in the “Poles to planes” pane by
placing a yellow circle behind the dot on the Mohr Cir-
cle.
MohrPlotter can color the planes, poles, and
points on the Mohr diagram according to their slip
tendency (Morris and Ferrill, 2009) by checking the slip
tendency checkbox. Slip tendency is defined as:
τ
(σ n − Pf )

The program uses hotter colors (reds and oranges) for

planes that are most likely to slip and cooler colors
(blues and greens) for planes least likely to slip. This is
especially informative in the stereonet view.
Two specialized checkboxes are also available in
this tab. “Use tensor sign convention…” enables you to
determine how the sign of the shear stress in inter-
preted. In the classic Mohr Circle for stress, counter-
clockwise (left-lateral) shear is positive, however, when
the Mohr’s Circle is derived as a tensor transformation
or via Cauchy’s las, clockwise is positive. When you do
a transformation — for example by changing the prin-
cipal stresses — you can either transform the planes
and keeping the angles with respect to the principal
stresses constant, or you can maintain the geographic
orientations of the planes and change the angles of the
poles with respect to the principal stresses. Checking
“preserve geographic coordinates on transf” enable the later option.

Opening, Saving and Importing

The file menu is where you carry out various operations related to capturing and
retrieving your analyses.

Saving you analysis for later use

Once you have an analysis that you are happy with, you can save a text file that
contains all of the data by selecting File>Save Analysis (though it does not record the
various plot options). The text file is a simple tab separated column formatted file with

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header lines that tell you what each number is. The file can be opened in any text editor
or spreadsheet program. This is the simplest way, for example, to record the shear and
normal stress on each plane entered as well as their geographic coordinates, assuming
that the tensor coordinate system has been defined.

Open Analysis
Once you have saved the analysis, you can open it again in MohrPlotter. This will
work flawlessly as long as you haven’t modified the formatting or changed the numbers
from what the program wrote originally. If you have, the results will be unpredictable as
MohrPlotter only checks the header line initially to make sure that it is the right kind of
text file!

Import Planes
This option becomes available once you have defined the tensor coordinate sys-
tem in the Tensor Window, either by entering the six components of the tensor in the
Tensor format tab, or by entering the principal stress orientations and magnitudes in the
Principal Stress format tab, and then pressing the Calculate button.
Choosing File>Import Planes allows you to read a simple text file of strikes and
dips with a tab character between each value, one orientation per row. Strike and dip
are assumed to be in right hand rule format. MohrPlotter ignores the first line which as-
sumes to be a header line. This is the type of file written automatically by Stereonet
when you choose File>Export Text File>Stereonet 6 Format in that program. The first
few lines of such a file would look like:
AZ
231   45
19   56
…

Saving Your Plot for Use Elsewhere

The plots can be saved as an .svg (scaleable vector graphics) file, a high quality,
open, vector format that can be read in editable form by most modern graphics pro-
grams. The plot is saved exactly as it appears on the screen. If you want to save a bigger
(or smaller) plot, just drag on a corner or edge of the main window to expand or con-
tract the plot area and plot before saving the .svg file. If the Mohr Circle Window is ac-
tive and in front, then the mohr circle plot will be saved. If the Tensor Window is ac-
tive and in front, then the stereonet view will be saved. Once in a graphics program,
circle can be filled or moved, text can be edited, etc. The figure on the following page
shows the quality of the .svg file output. It has not been retouched in any way. Note that
the red arcs show the construction lines one would use if you were graphing the three
planes manually. The program, of course, does a tensor transformation. In this figure,

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with the pore fluid pressure used, planes 1 and 3 will be reactivated but plane 2 will not
be.

σ(s)

50

1
3

σ(n)
50 100

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References Cited
Allmendinger, R. W., Cardozo, N. C., and Fisher, D., 2012, Structural Geology Algo-
rithms: Vectors & Tensors: Cambridge, England, Cambridge University Press, 289
pp.
Angelier, J., 1984, Tectonic analysis of fault slip data sets: Journal of Geophysical Re-
search, v. 89, p. 5835-5848.
Bott, M. H. P., 1959, The mechanics of oblique slip faulting: Geological Magazine, v. 96,
p. 109-117.
Fossen, H., 2010, Structural Geology: Cambridge, England, Cambridge University Press,
480 pp.
Gephart, J. W., 1990, Stress and the direction of slip on fault planes: Tectonics, v. 9, p.
845-858.
Gephart, J. W., and Forsyth, D. W., 1984, An improved method for determining the re-
gional stress tensor using earthquake focal mechanism data: Application to the
San Fernando earthquake sequence: Journal of Geophysical Research, v. 89, p.
9305-9320.
Jaeger, J. C., and Cook, N. G. W., 1979, Fundamentals of Rock Mechanics: London,
Chapman and Hall, 593 pp.
Morris, A. P., and Ferrill, D. A., 2009, The importance of the effective intermediate prin-
cipal stress (σ′2) to fault slip patterns: Journal of Structural Geology, v. 31, no. 9,
p. 950-959, doi: 10.1016/j.jsg.2008.03.013.
Suppe, J., 1985, Principles of structural geology: Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-
Hall, Inc., 537 pp.

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