ABSTRACT
Soils are multi-phase media and therefore they are idealized as superimposed continua. In particular, a recurrent example in this book is a fully saturated soil: the behaviour of this body will be analysed as a continuum medium, representing the solid phase, superimposed to another continuum medium representing the fluid phase. This assumption allows us to apply to soils stress and strain tensor concepts, as well as the continuum mechanics laws we discussed in previous chapters.
