Coulomb is designed to investigate Coulomb stress changes on mapped faults and earthquake nodal planes, and is intended both for publication-directed research and for university teaching and instruction.

One can calculate static displacements (on any surface or at GPS stations), strains, and stresses caused by fault slip, magmatic intrusion or dike expansion. Problems such as how an earthquake promotes or inhibits failure on nearby faults, or how fault slip or dike expansion will compress a nearby magma chamber, are germane to Coulomb. Geologic deformation associated with strike-slip faults, normal faults, or fault-bend folds is also a useful application. Calculations are made in an elastic halfspace with uniform isotropic elastic properties following Okada (1992).