ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 has presented in some detail some of the constitutive models that might be used to describe the mechanical response of soils. It is clear from the discussion of key aspects of soil behaviour in section §2.5 that elastic models are unlikely to be especially satisfactory except in limited applications. If the material can be deemed to be linearly elastic then many of the details of numerical analysis become rather straightforward-and, in particular, there are many existing solutions for distributions of stresses and displacements in elastic systems that can be readily adapted (see, for example, Poulos and Davis, 1974). For more nonlinear and history dependent (elastic-plastic) materials numerical analysis is almost certain to be required except for the most trivial of applications.
