“Cohesive Soil”: A Dangerous Oxymoron

The geotechnical literature is not exempt from oxymorons. For example, analytical solutions for interparticle contact clearly show that soils and all particulate materials are inherently non-linear -Hertz theoryand non-elastic -Mindlin’s theory (See Richart, Hall and Woods, 1970; Cascante and Santamarina, 1996). Yet, “linearelastic soil behavior” is a common expression. In most cases it refers to the model selected to interpret test results or to the assumption made in the design of geosystems subjected to small strains. For many reasons, linear elasticity has proven quite useful (insensitivity of the induced field of stress to material parameters and difficulty in gathering parameters for more sophisticated and complex constitutive models).