Constitutive Relations for Soil Materials
and
Department of Civil Engineering and Operations Research
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
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Constitutive Relations for Soil Materials
and Department of Civil Engineering and Operations Research |
ABSTRACT
Recent advances in digital computer technology and in numerical techniques such as the finite difference or the finite element methods, have rendered possible, at least in principle, the solution of any properly posed boundary value problems in soil mechanics. Further progress in expanding analytical capabilities in geomechanics depends upon consistent mathematical formulations of generally valid and realistic material constitutive relations. An increasing effort has thus been devoted since the 1960's to a more comprehensive description of soil behavior. Numerous formulations have been proposed in the soil mechanics literature. All rely on a better knowledge and understanding of mechanics in general, and continuum mechanics in particular, than has been common in traditional soil mechanics training. The results and progress in the field of constitutive relations have thus until recently been mostly ignored by the mainstream of soil engineering. However, recent progress and honest validation exercises have instilled confidence and finally attracted the attention of the practice. We should therefore see in the future more impact on the practice of this area of soil mechanics.
It is the purpose of this paper to provide an overview of soil constitutive models and related issues. The review is brief and makes no attempt to be exhaustive. In recent years, the growing interest in constitutive relations has led to a number of conferences devoted exclusively to theoretical, experimental, numerical implementations and application problems associated with this field. It would have been impossible to record all the papers and discuss all the models that have been proposed.
KEYWORDS: Constitutive theory, Elastic-plastic, Strain localization, Parameter calibration, In-situ soil tests, Soil liquefaction, Stochastic finite elements
