In materials science and solid mechanics, Poisson's ratioν (nu) is a measure of the Poisson effect, the deformation of a material in directions perpendicular to the specific direction of loading. The value of Poisson's ratio is the negative of the ratio of transverse strain to axial strain. For small values of these changes, ν is the amount of transversal elongation divided by the amount of axial compression. Most materials have Poisson's ratio values ranging between 0.0 and 0.5. For soft materials, such as rubber, where the bulk modulus is much higher than the shear modulus, Poisson's ratio is near 0.5. For open-cell polymer foams, Poisson's ratio is near zero, since the cells tend to collapse in compression. Many typical solids have Poisson's ratios in the range of 0.2 to 0.3. The ratio is named after the French mathematician and physicist Siméon Poisson.
Soil liquefaction occurs when a cohesionless saturated or partially saturated soil substantially loses strength and stiffness in response to an applied stress such as shaking during an earthquake or other sudden change in stress condition, in which material that is ordinarily a solid behaves like a liquid. In soil mechanics, the term "liquefied" was first used by Allen Hazen in reference to the 1918 failure of the Calaveras Dam in California. He described the mechanism of flow liquefaction of the embankment dam as:
If the pressure of the water in the pores is great enough to carry all the load, it will have the effect of holding the particles apart and of producing a condition that is practically equivalent to that of quicksand... the initial movement of some part of the material might result in accumulating pressure, first on one point, and then on another, successively, as the early points of concentration were liquefied.
Soil mechanics is a branch of soil physics and applied mechanics that describes the behavior of soils. It differs from fluid mechanics and solid mechanics in the sense that soils consist of a heterogeneous mixture of fluids and particles but soil may also contain organic solids and other matter. Along with rock mechanics, soil mechanics provides the theoretical basis for analysis in geotechnical engineering, a subdiscipline of civil engineering, and engineering geology, a subdiscipline of geology. Soil mechanics is used to analyze the deformations of and flow of fluids within natural and man-made structures that are supported on or made of soil, or structures that are buried in soils. Example applications are building and bridge foundations, retaining walls, dams, and buried pipeline systems. Principles of soil mechanics are also used in related disciplines such as geophysical engineering, coastal engineering, agricultural engineering, hydrology and soil physics.
In the field of hydrogeology, storage properties are physical properties that characterize the capacity of an aquifer to release groundwater. These properties are storativity (S), specific storage (Ss) and specific yield (Sy). According to Groundwater, by Freeze and Cherry (1979), specific storage, [m−1], of a saturated aquifer is defined as the volume of water that a unit volume of the aquifer releases from storage under a unit decline in hydraulic head.
The effective stress can be defined as the stress, depending on the applied tension and pore pressure , which controls the strain or strength behaviour of soil and rock for whatever pore pressure value or, in other terms, the stress which applied over a dry porous body provides the same strain or strength behaviour which is observed at ≠ 0. In the case of granular media it can be viewed as a force that keeps a collection of particles rigid. Usually this applies to sand, soil, or gravel, as well as every kind of rock and several other porous materials such as concrete, metal powders, biological tissues etc. The usefulness of an appropriate ESP formulation consists in allowing to assess the behaviour of a porous body for whatever pore pressure value on the basis of experiments involving dry samples.
In continuum mechanics, hydrostatic stress, also known as isotropic stress or volumetric stress, is a component of stress which contains uniaxial stresses, but not shear stresses. A specialized case of hydrostatic stress contains isotropic compressive stress, which changes only in volume, but not in shape. Pure hydrostatic stress can be experienced by a point in a fluid such as water. It is often used interchangeably with "mechanical pressure" and is also known as confining stress, particularly in the field of geomechanics.
In geotechnical engineering, bearing capacity is the capacity of soil to support the loads applied to the ground. The bearing capacity of soil is the maximum average contact pressure between the foundation and the soil which should not produce shear failure in the soil. Ultimate bearing capacity is the theoretical maximum pressure which can be supported without failure; allowable bearing capacity is the ultimate bearing capacity divided by a factor of safety. Sometimes, on soft soil sites, large settlements may occur under loaded foundations without actual shear failure occurring; in such cases, the allowable bearing capacity is based on the maximum allowable settlement. The allowable bearing pressure is the maximum pressure that can be applied to the soil without causing failure. The ultimate bearing capacity, on the other hand, is the maximum pressure that can be applied to the soil before it fails.
The lateral earth pressure is the pressure that soil exerts in the horizontal direction. It is important because it affects the consolidation behavior and strength of the soil and because it is considered in the design of geotechnical engineering structures such as retaining walls, basements, tunnels, deep foundations and braced excavations.
Shear strength is a term used in soil mechanics to describe the magnitude of the shear stress that a soil can sustain. The shear resistance of soil is a result of friction and interlocking of particles, and possibly cementation or bonding of particle contacts. Due to interlocking, particulate material may expand or contract in volume as it is subject to shear strains. If soil expands its volume, the density of particles will decrease and the strength will decrease; in this case, the peak strength would be followed by a reduction of shear stress. The stress-strain relationship levels off when the material stops expanding or contracting, and when interparticle bonds are broken. The theoretical state at which the shear stress and density remain constant while the shear strain increases may be called the critical state, steady state, or residual strength.
Terzaghi's Principle states that when stress is applied to a porous material, it is opposed by the fluid pressure filling the pores in the material.
In geology, a deformation mechanism is a process occurring at a microscopic scale that is responsible for changes in a material's internal structure, shape and volume. The process involves planar discontinuity and/or displacement of atoms from their original position within a crystal lattice structure. These small changes are preserved in various microstructures of materials such as rocks, metals and plastics, and can be studied in depth using optical or digital microscopy.
Critical state soil mechanics is the area of soil mechanics that encompasses the conceptual models representing the mechanical behavior of saturated remoulded soils based on the critical state concept. At the critical state, the relationship between forces applied in the soil (stress), and the resulting deformation resulting from this stress (strain) becomes constant. The soil will continue to deform, but the stress will no longer increase.
The Larson–Miller relation, also widely known as the Larson–Miller parameter and often abbreviated LMP, is a parametric relation used to extrapolate experimental data on creep and rupture life of engineering materials.
Preconsolidation pressure is the maximum effective vertical overburden stress that a particular soil sample has sustained in the past. This quantity is important in geotechnical engineering, particularly for finding the expected settlement of foundations and embankments. Alternative names for the preconsolidation pressure are preconsolidation stress, pre-compression stress, pre-compaction stress, and preload stress. A soil is called overconsolidated if the current effective stress acting on the soil is less than the historical maximum.
An oedometer test is a kind of geotechnical investigation performed in geotechnical engineering that measures a soil's consolidation properties. Oedometer tests are performed by applying different loads to a soil sample and measuring the deformation response. The results from these tests are used to predict how a soil in the field will deform in response to a change in effective stress.
Geotechnical centrifuge modeling is a technique for testing physical scale models of geotechnical engineering systems such as natural and man-made slopes and earth retaining structures and building or bridge foundations.
Creep and shrinkage of concrete are two physical properties of concrete. The creep of concrete, which originates from the calcium silicate hydrates (C-S-H) in the hardened Portland cement paste, is fundamentally different from the creep of metals and polymers. Unlike the creep of metals, it occurs at all stress levels and, within the service stress range, is linearly dependent on the stress if the pore water content is constant. Unlike the creep of polymers and metals, it exhibits multi-months aging, caused by chemical hardening due to hydration which stiffens the microstructure, and multi-year aging, caused by long-term relaxation of self-equilibrated micro-stresses in the nano-porous microstructure of the C-S-H. If concrete is fully dried, it does not creep, but it is next to impossible to dry concrete fully without severe cracking.
Plasticity theory for rocks is concerned with the response of rocks to loads beyond the elastic limit. Historically, conventional wisdom has it that rock is brittle and fails by fracture while plasticity is identified with ductile materials. In field scale rock masses, structural discontinuities exist in the rock indicating that failure has taken place. Since the rock has not fallen apart, contrary to expectation of brittle behavior, clearly elasticity theory is not the last word.
Nabarro–Herring creep is a mode of deformation of crystalline materials that occurs at low stresses and held at elevated temperatures in fine-grained materials. In Nabarro–Herring creep, atoms diffuse through the crystals, and the creep rate varies inversely with the square of the grain size so fine-grained materials creep faster than coarser-grained ones. NH creep is solely controlled by diffusional mass transport. This type of creep results from the diffusion of vacancies from regions of high chemical potential at grain boundaries subjected to normal tensile stresses to regions of lower chemical potential where the average tensile stresses across the grain boundaries are zero. Self-diffusion within the grains of a polycrystalline solid can cause the solid to yield to an applied shearing stress, the yielding being caused by a diffusional flow of matter within each crystal grain away from boundaries where there is a normal pressure and toward those where there is a normal tension. Atoms migrating in the opposite direction account for the creep strain. The creep strain rate is derived in the next section. NH creep is more important in ceramics than metals as dislocation motion is more difficult to effect in ceramics.
Stress distribution in soil is a function of the type of soil, the relative rigidity of the soil and the footing, and the depth of foundation at level of contact between footing and soil.The estimation of vertical stresses at any point in a soil mass due to external loading is essential to the prediction of settlements of buildings, bridges and pressure.
