Symposium on Plasticity and Soil Mechanics

Soil Compaction and Soil Tillage – Studies in Agricultural Soil Mechanics

Keller, T. 2004. Soil Compaction and Soil Tillage Studies in Agricultural Soil Mechanics Doctoral dissertation. ISSN 1401-6249, ISBN 91-576-6769-1 This thesis deals with various aspects of soil compaction due to agricultural field traffic, the draught force requirement of tillage implements and soil structures produced by tillage. Several field experiments were carried out to study the mechanic...

Soil mechanics: breaking ground.

In soil mechanics, student's models are classified as simple models that teach us unexplained elements of behaviour; an example is the Cam clay constitutive models of critical state soil mechanics (CSSM). 'Engineer's models' are models that elaborate the theory to fit more behavioural trends; this is usually done by adding fitting parameters to the student's models. Can currently unexplained be...

Apollo 11 soil mechanics investigation.

The fine-grained surface material at the Apollo 11 landing site is a brownish, medium-gray, slightly cohesive granular soil, with bulky grains in the silt-to-fine-sand range, having a specific gravity of 3.1 and exhibiting adhesive characteristics. Within the upper few centimeters, the lunar soil has an average density of about 1.6 grams per cubic centimeter and is similar in appearance and beh...

The Role of Micro-Mechanics in Soil Mechanics

Influence of rotations on the critical state of soil mechanics

The ability of grains to rotate can play a crucial role on the collective behavior of granular media. It has been observed in computer simulations that imposing a torque at the contacts modifies the force chains, making support chains less important. In this work we investigate the effect of a gradual hindering of the grains rotations on the so-called critical state of soil mechanics. The criti...