Stratified media: Continuum approach and its identification based on homogenization technique

A continuum approach for specifying the conditions at failure in stratified soils is examined. Both short-term and long-term conditions are addressed, relevant to undrained constraint and the drained analysis, respectively. In the former case, an anisotropic Tresca criterion is employed based on the critical plane approach. The material functions are identified from a homogenization procedure. For the long-term conditions, an anisotropic Mohr-Coulomb criterion is formulated, which incorporates the notion of a microstructureorientation tensor. Again, the results generated from a homogenization approach are used for the purpose of calibration and verification of the continuum formulation.