Yielding and Flow of Sand in Triaxial Compression: Part I

A theoretical and experimental study of the nature of deformation of a sand sample when tested in the triaxial apparatus is presented. The medium is shown to be elastic-strain hardening plastic but does not conform to certain rules usually adopted in the classical theory of plasticity. Experimental verification of an earlier suggestion by Poorooshasb (1961) leads to a proof of the existence of a potential function, known as the plastic potential, of the form Ψ(σ, e) the parameters σ representing the stress and e the voids ratio. The plastic potential curves defined by Ψ = constant, e = constant, trace a family of geometrically similar curves when plotted in a stress space. The yield loci, on the other hand, are found to be independent of voids ratio and are only functions of the ratio of the second invariant of the stress deviation tensor to the first invariant of the stress tensor. It is noted, therefore, that the plastic potential and yield surface are not coincidental. This defies the normality conditi...