Abstract: There are usually some definite soft and shear zones in the foundations, in stress and deformation analysis, the non-linear properties of these zones must be taken into consideration, but the intensive regions are still in elastic state. For simplification of analysis, we may take the elastic regions as substructures and analyzed separately, then make a coupled analysis with the non-linear zones. In this paper, a simple description of the concept and the procedure of the method are given.