Stress-dilatancy based modelling of granular materials and extensions to soils with crushable grains

Stress–dilatancy relations have played a crucial role in the understanding of the mechanical behaviour of soils and in the development of realistic constitutive models for their response. Recent investigations on the mechanical behaviour of materials with crushable grains have called into question the validity of classical relations such as those used in critical state soil mechanics. In this paper, a method to construct thermodynamically consistent (isotropic, three-invariant) elasto-plastic models based on a given stress–dilatancy relation is discussed. Extensions to cover the case of granular materials with crushable grains are also presented, based on the interpretation of some classical model parameters (e.g. the stress ratio at critical state) as internal variables that evolve according to suitable hardening laws. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.