Chapter 3 - Essentials of material behaviour
The strength of a material describes the ultimate state of stress that it can sustain before
it fails.
tensile strength, compressive strength, shear strength.
The link between these different strengths is the maximum shear stress, or the size of the
largest Mohr circle that the material can sustain.
two fundamentally different failure criteria to consider
cohesion and friction model
Friction
Dry sugar and butter
Damp sugar will have a strength given by the Mohr–Coulomb criterion; there is a cohesion
because the sugar grains are stuck together.
Brittle and ductile
Bending a biscuit, it will snap, it wont deform
load warm butter by pressing it with your hand it will gradually deform. This is ductile
behaviour.
Soils and rocks may be either brittle or ductile
Soft clay is ductile when it has a relatively high water content but, if it is highly compressed,
stiff clay becomes brittle.
Stiffness
The stiffness modulus, which is the gradient of the stress–strain curve, may be a
tangent or a secant:
For isotropic loading for which q remains constant we can define a bulk modulus K’
o
and for triaxial loading with p’ constant we can define a shear modulus G’s:
o
For loading in a shear test
o with zero or constant shear stress we can define a one-dimensional modulus
M
o and for shearing with constant normal stress the shear modulus is G where
o
Alternative stiffness parameters are Young’s modulus E and Poisson’s ratio ν .
These are obtained directly from a uniaxial compression or extension test in which
the radial stress σ r is held constant (or zero) and are given by
from a uniaxial compression or extension test
o
In soil mechanics the shear and bulk moduli G and K are often used instead of
Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio
because it is important to consider shearing and change of shape separately or
decoupled from compression and change of size.
Strength, stiffness and rigidity
Strength - is the maximum shear stress which it can sustain
Stiffness – ratio of the change of stress to the resulting strain
Rigidity -
A material may be relatively strong or relatively weak: it may be relatively stiff or relatively
soft.
Concrete (in compression) and rubber have similar strengths but concrete is much stiffer
than rubber.
Aluminium and glass have similar stiffnesses but glass is much stronger than aluminium.
Constitutive equations
During a general loading in the ground both shear and normal stresses
shearing and volumetric effects are coupled so that shearing stresses cause volumetric
strains and normal stresses cause shear strains.
For materials that are isotropic and elastic and perfectly plastic J1=J2
For isotropic and elastic materials J1=J2=0
However, for materials that are isotropic and elastic, shear and volumetric
effects are decoupled so that C12 = C21 = 0 and in this case C11 = 1/S11 = 1/3G and
C22 = 1/S22 = 1/K.
3.8 Elasticity
An important feature of isotropic and elastic materials is that shear and volumetric effects are
decoupled
more usual elastic parameters are Young’s modulus Eand Poisson’s ratio ν
3.9 Perfect plasticity
When the loading passes the yield
simultaneous elastic and plastic strain occurs
stiffness decrease
work done is dissipated
plastic strain are not recovered
At the ultimate stress,
no further changes of stress
all the strains at the failure are irrecoverable
plastic flow occurs
impossible to calculate the magnitude of the plastic strains
relative rates of different strains (shear and volumetric strains)
Since the stresses remain constant the strains accumulate with time and so the origin is
arbitrary.
The direction of the vector of the increment
Flow rule – the relationship between the failure envelope and the direction of the vector of
plastic strain
Normality condition of perfect plasticity - For a perfectly plastic material, plastic strain is
normal to the failure envelope.
a plastic potential envelope that is orthogonal to all the vectors of plastic straining, as
shown in Fig. 3.10. Then the material is perfectly plastic if the plastic potential is the same as
the failure envelope. This is called an associated flow rule as the plastic potential is
associated with the failure envelope.
plastic strains depend on the state of stress and do not depend on the small change of stress
that causes the failure.
Plastic strains are governed by the gradient of the failure envelope
ideal elastic–perfectly plastic material
3.10 Combined elasto–plastic behaviour
The principal consequences of straining from y1 to y2 are to cause irrecoverable plastic strains
The increase in the yield point due to plastic straining is called hardening
The decrease in the yield point due to plastic straining is called softening
Hardening law – the relationship between the increase in the yield stress and the plastic straining
