CRITICAL STATE SOIL MECHANICS AND THE BEHAVIOUR OF REAL SOILS

Critical state soil mechanics comprises concepts which are extremely powerful for understanding, analyzing and predicting soil behavior. However, most soils present characteristics which are not taken into account by this approach. These are in particular anisotropy, development of plastic strains below the state boundary surface, viscosity, structure and partial saturation. The paper summarizes the influence of these factors on soil behavior and examines how it could be included into an extended critical state soil mechanics framework. Difficulties associated with the determination of critical state and the implications of localization are also discussed.