ON THE FAILURE OF GRANULAR MATERIALS WITH FABRIC EFFECTS

Anisotropic failure criteria for granular materials are formulated, based on micromechanical analysis. The shear resistance is assumed to consist of two components related to fabric anisotropy and interparticle frictional forces. By considering the directional contribution of contact normals, the failure criteria are developed via two approaches : one employs the invariants of stress and fabric tensors; and the other considers the relation between the traction components acting on the critical plane. In the stress invariant approach, however, some microscopic features of granular materials may not be captured due to the utilization of stress invariants. Numerical examples, examining the variation of shear strength of granular materials with different orientations of bedding plane and the degree of anisotropy, compare the proposed approaches with other models in the literature.