1.

1 INTRODUCTION

The most common structures which the geotechnical engineer may be required to design in soil and
rock may be divided into three types of problems, namely: (1) the foundation and anchorage
problems; (2) the slope and excavation problems; and (3) the earth pressure and retaining wall
problems (Chen, 1975). Of all these problems, the engineer is required to make a two-stage process
in his design operation: firstly, he has to determine the force field acting on the structural material
due to the environmental loadings to which it may be subjected, and secondly, the reaction of the
material to that force field, so that it is capable of withstanding the environmental conditions. The
first stage involves an analysis of the stresses acting within the structural members; the second
involves a knowledge of the properties of the structural material, and in particular its mechanical
properties which define the characteristic reaction of the material to the force field of its
environment. These are typical stress analysis and design problems in soil mechanics, which is a
branch of the science of solid mechanics. The word mechanics implies a mathematical formulation
of the problem and of the basic equations to be used in its solution. All soil is discontinuous to some
extent, but it becomes irrelevant at some scale of aggregation and a continuum view is necessary
and valid. In the continuum theory of soil mechanics that includes the mathematical theories of
elasticity, plasticity, and viscosity, the basic sets of equations are: (1) equations of equilibrium or
motion; (2) conditions of geometry or compatibility of strains and displacements; and (3) material
constitutive laws or stress-strain relations. Clearly, both the equations of equilibrium and the
equations of compatibility are independent of the characteristics of the material. They are valid for
metals, soils as well as rock or concrete materials. The differentiating feature of various material
behaviors is accounted for in the material constitutive relationships which idealize the behavior of
actual materials. Once the material stress-strain relationship is known, equations of equilibrium and
of compatibility are used to determine the state of stress or strain when an idealized body is
subjected to prescribed forces. The stress-strain or constitutive relationship for a material depends
on many factors, including the homogeneity, isotropy and continuity of the body material, its
reaction to loading over a period and the rate and magnitude of loading. Under general
environmental and loading conditions, such a relationship can be highly nonlinear, anisotropic and
irreversible, and the difficulties involved in stress analysis can be virtually insuperable, even with
the present developments in computational techniques like the finite-element method. If, however,
the unit under load is large enough and the environmental and loading conditions are defined with
certain limits, it is possible to assume that soils under load can be idealized and treated as linear
elastic or nonlinear elastic, and perfectly plastic or work-hardening plastic materials for the purpose
of stress and strain analysis, thus providing the necessary stress-strain relationship for the solution
of an idealized soil mechanics problem. These elastic/ plastic stress-strain relationships and their
applications to soils under the general heading of "Soil Plasticity: Theory and Implementation" are
discussed in the following chapters. This chapter will present a simple, concise and reasonably
comprehensive introduction to the mechanics of soil that will set the stage for the subsequent
chapters. The reader is assumed to be familiar with the more elementary aspects of stress analysis
and some basic concepts of elasticity, viscosity and plasticity. A recent two-volume comprehensive
book entitled "Constitutive Equations for Engineering Materials" by Chen and Saleeb (1982, 1986)
may prove helpful in this respect as an introduction to constitutive modeling of engineering
materials. Although the basic concepts of stress analysis and strain analysis can be found in a
number of standard books, but for completeness, some of the developments involving stress and
strain transformations in three dimensions are collected here in a form which is keyed directly to
the main exposition of the present chapter and the chapters that follow. Since the mathematical
theories of elasticity, viscosity, and plasticity all follow the same course, we therefore present the
material in the same sequence. Firstly, the notions of stress and strain are developed (Sections 1.3
and 1.4); secondly, strain equations describing the geometry of deformation of a continuum, and
stress equations expressing the basic physical principles of equilibrium or of motion are set up
(Sections 1.5.1 and 1.5.2) but in order to arrive at a system of equations which enable the state of
stress and strain to be calculated, stress-strain relations must be obtained, which idealize the
behavior of actual materials (Section 1.5.3). The form of such relations are not entirely arbitrarily.
They must satisfy the basic principles of continuum mechanics including the restrictions from
thermodynamic laws. It is, of course, the simple mathematical expressions on soils that simulate the
actual relations between stress and strain for practical use (Section 1.6).

1.6 CONSTITUTIVE MODELING OF SOILS AND ROCKS

1.6.1 Soil and rock as a continuum

Unlike steel which can be refined to a consistent internal state before use, a soil or rock is a naturally
occurring material and must be used in its natural state. All soils and rocks consist of mineral
particles, air voids, and water. Therefore, the mathematical characterization of soil behavior should
ideally be based on a consideration of the behavior of individual mineral grain or particle in a soil
mass and their interaction so that the "macroscopic" continuum stress-strain-time relations are
derived from the more basic "microscopic" interactions of many particles including the use of
probabilistic and statistical theories to handle the probabilistic nature of the interparticle contact
relationships. However, such an approach in modeling soil behavior or rock can be rather complex
and would not be particularly fruitful in practical applications. For most soil or rock engineering
problems, the scale of the geometry of interest is very large. At this scale, therefore, the
"microscopic" or "discontinuous" effects can be averaged, and a continuum view of soil or rock is
necessary for progress. The mechanical behavior of the soil or rock and its mathematical
characterization can then be studied based upon the principles of continuum mechanics; i.e., an
entirely phenomenological approach on a macroscopic level. This latter approach forms the basis of
most of the commonly used constitutive models for soils and rocks. The main purpose of the
following chapter is therefore to discuss and evaluate various types of these models. Within the
framework of continuum mechanics, the behavior of real materials is generally idealized as time-
independent or time-dependent. In the time-independent idealization, such as elastic and elastic-
plastic models, time effects are neglected. Time does not appear explicitly as a variable in the
constitutive relations; and phenomena like rate sensitivity, aging effects, and creep are not included
in these material models. Further for an ideal elastic model, the behavior is reversible and
independent of the loading path, while it is irreversible and load path dependent in a plasticity-
based model. On the other hand, in the time-dependent material idealization such as the
viscoelastic and viscoplastic models, time effects are considered, and, therefore, they are generally
capable of describing rate- and history-dependent behavior. In soil mechanics, constitutive
modeling of soils is of central importance to the analyses and engineering design of geotechnical
problems. Elastic modeling has been used most widely and is well understood, but irreversible and
cyclic deformation is not. This is an area of great importance to soil mechanics in general and to
earthquake engineering and dynamic analysis in particular (Chen, 1984a). In Chapter 2, directions
of current research on this subject will be emphasized. It must be emphasized here that the previous
idealizations and subsequent classification of the constitutive models are only for mathematical
convenience in describing the actual complex behavior of real materials. Nothing can compel the
material to behave according to any of these idealized models. Indeed, for soils and rocks, as in
metals, the actual material response will exhibit the behavior characteristics of most of these
models under certain conditions of stresses, temperatures, vibration, and strain rates. Therefore, in
any practical problem, it is essential that we determine the limits and conditions under which the
material can sensibly be assumed to exhibit the dominant characteristics of a particular type of the
idealized models. Furthermore, since any idealized model has its own shortcomings, all the results
obtained must be interpreted carefully in terms of these shortcomings.

1.6.2 General approaches

There are different approaches for the formulation of constitutive models of soils or rocks. In
general, these can be classified into two basic approaches (Chen, 1984b, c):

(1) Finite material characterizations in the form of secant (total) stress-strain models. Included in
this class of models are those based on nonlinear elasticity and deformation theory of plasticity.

(2) Incremental (differential or rate) material descriptions in the form of tangential stress-strain
models. The most prominent models of this category are those based on hypoelasticity and flow
theory of plasticity.

In the following chapter, the underlying concepts and the general characteristics of various types of
elasticity- and plasticity-based models are briefly summarized. A comprehensive review of the
presently available soil models related to practical applications of soil plasticity and soil elasticity is
given in the subsequent chapters.