Formulation of anisotropic failure criteria incorporating a microstructure tensor

Anisotropy is inherently related to microstructural arrangement within a representative volume of material. The microstructure can be represented by a second order tensor whose eigenvectors specify the orientation of the axes of material symmetry. In this paper, failure criteria for geomaterials are formulated in terms of the stress state and a microstructure tensor. The classical criteria for isotropic materials are generalized for the case of orthotropy as well as transverse isotropy. The proposed approach is illustrated by a simple example demonstrating the sensitivity of the uniaxial strength of the material to the orientation of the sample relative to the loading direction.