Charles-Augustin de Coulomb 2026-10-24
Physicist and engineer whose work includes friction and strength of materials. His name appears in the Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion.
Portrait of Charles-Augustin de Coulomb
. Louis Hierle, 1894, after Hippolyte Lecomte; painted portrait at Versailles. Public domain according to the Wikimedia Commons file page (PD-old-100 and PD-US-expired). Source usage terms, via Wikimedia Commons. Source. Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion 2026-10-25
A frictional shear-strength approximation , with cohesion and internal friction angle . Effective compression increases shear resistance. A separate tensile cutoff is generally needed at low confinement. The names refer to Christian Otto Mohr and Charles-Augustin de Coulomb.
