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Soil Failure

The document discusses four basic forms of soil failure that are commonly observed: plastic flow, general shear failure, fragmentation, and fracture. It provides details on each failure mechanism, including how they present in laboratory compression tests.

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John Paulo Perido
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38 views6 pages

Soil Failure

The document discusses four basic forms of soil failure that are commonly observed: plastic flow, general shear failure, fragmentation, and fracture. It provides details on each failure mechanism, including how they present in laboratory compression tests.

Uploaded by

John Paulo Perido
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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18 Nov 2019

SOIL FAILURE

SOIL FAILURE
• During tillage operations the desired intent is to bring the soil to
failure and the behavior of the soil in this phase of loading is of
particular interest.
• When discussing failure and yield, it is customary in plasticity theory
to have recourse to surfaces in principal stress space.
• This may appear to be an attractive approach in that it has similarities
to the critical state model in state space.

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18 Nov 2019

SOIL FAILURE

• During tillage operations the desired


intent is to bring the soil to failure and
the behavior of the soil in this phase of
loading is of particular interest.
• When discussing failure and yield, it is
customary in plasticity theory to have
recourse to surfaces in principal stress
space.
• This may appear to be an attractive
approach in that it has similarities to the
critical state model in state space.

SOIL FAILURE

• Nevertheless, unlike p-q-v-space, it is


difficult to attribute physical meaning to
𝜎1 − 𝜎2 − 𝜎3 -space and hence the
discussion on failure will be carried out in
the context of the stress-strain behavior
of soils.
• It is relatively easy to relate such
characteristics with observable behavior
during simple compression testing.
• Four basic forms of soil failure commonly
observed will be dealt with next.

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18 Nov 2019

PLASTIC FLOW

• This type of failure takes place with large plastic deformations


and there is little or no separation of the soil mass.
• The state paths are confined to the sub-critical domain and
the soil compacts as the Roscoe surface is traversed.
• This is a useful mode of deformation during the formation of
mole channels but in relation to the compaction problem this
has detrimental effects on the soil.

PLASTIC FLOW

• In laboratory compression tests this failure is associated with


the barrelling of cylindrical specimens without failure, as
shown in Fig. II(a).

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18 Nov 2019

GENERAL SHEAR FAILURE


• In this form of failure the soil everywhere within the rupture
boundary reaches incipient shear failure and represents the
behaviour of a rigid-plastic soil model.
• Since there are no deformations prior to failure the state path
must be a vertical line lying on the critical state wall.
• This wall thus constitutes the domain in which stability analyses
are carried out in classical soil mechanics.

GENERAL SHEAR FAILURE

• In theory, a large volume of soil is brought simultaneously to


shear failure, and hence it is a desirable form of failure in
cultivation operations.
• In practice, only narrow bands adjacent to the rupture
boundaries will reach critical conditions, and the soil breaks
up into large blocks. Compression testing specimens fail
cleanly along well-defined slip planes as shown in Fig. /l(b).

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18 Nov 2019

Fragmentation

• State paths conducive to this category of failure are located


in the super-critical domain.
• Two characteristics of this type of failure can be identified.
• In the first instance the soil is dilating rapidly as the state paths
traverse the Hvorslev surface.
• Secondly, the stress paths are unstable because the shear
stresses are falling away rapidly from the initial point of
contact with the Hvorslev surface.

Fragmentation

• This is a very useful form of failure in tillage and sub-soiling


operations.
• As shown in Fig. II(c) compression testing causes the samples
to fail on numerous slip planes within the soil mass.

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18 Nov 2019

FRACTURE
• This form of failure has been almost totally ignored in soil
mechanics practice due, no doubt, to the reasonable
assumption that saturated soils have hardly any tensile
strength.
• Nevertheless, partly saturated soils do develop appreciable
tensile strength either through the mobilization of soil moisture
tension or because of cementation by inorganic or organic
substances in the pore spaces.

11

FRACTURE

• The stress paths associated with fracture are mainly those


which reach the T-surface and are obviously an important
phase of failure during the cultivation of soils with high R-
values, low specific volumes and in a dry state.
• The basic criteria governing this type of failure are discussed
separately in section 9. In laboratory tests the specimens are
found to develop cracks parallel to the direction of action of
the major principal stress as shown in Fig. Z](d).

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