Mechanical and Civil Engineering Seminar

•  A soil sample is loaded in drained triaxial compression until it reaches Critical State.
•  At Critical State a rotation of stress principal axes is imposed at fixed stress principal values.
•  Question: Will the soil sample continue to be at Critical State or not, and why?

The answer to this question will surprise the followers of classical Critical State Theory for granular media, and cast doubts upon its completeness as the fundamental constitutive framework of theoretical soil mechanics taught in all Universities today. In elaborating the answer to this question by means of Discrete Elemets Method of analysis, the cardinal role of soil fabric will arise as the remedy to the incompleteness of Critical State Theory within a recently developed  Anisotropic Critical State Theory. Applications will illustrate the effectiveness of the latter.