Material Detail

This paper discusses the neglect of micro-mechanics in soil mechanics, and seeks to establish a role that will benefit both the research worker and the practitioner. In support of the mathematical construct of "plasticity", micro-mechanics introduces observations of grain crushing and re-arrangement. Not only does this help to explain the dimensionally inconsistent concept of the normal compression line, it goes some way to unifying our understanding ofsands and clays. Indeed, bridging the grain-continuum duality is the key to raising the confidence of practitioners both in the meaningfulness of certain constitutive modeling parameters and in the scaling rules applied to the behavior of small scale physical models.

Disciplines:

• Science and Technology  / Geoscience  / Geology