Multi‐laminate framework of soil models—plasticity formulation

Abstract This paper presents plasticity formulation of the multi‐laminate framework of soil models. Soil element is assumed to be an assemblage of perfectly fitting polyhedral blocks and irreversible deformations are assumed to occur due to sliding, separation/closing of the boundaries. Using an appropriate summation of mechanisms, the total plastic strains are obtained by evaluating contributions from an infinite number of randomly oriented planes in space. The paper provides a general plasticity formulation and examines various constitutive theories which can be incorporated into the framework.