ABSTRACT
Most natural soils are structured and the main structure inducing mechanisms are stress history (e.g. preloading, densification) and bonding (e.g. cementation, aging, thixotropy).These mechanisms can have a dominant role on natural soil behaviour affecting stiffness, dilatancy and strength, as well as their anisotropic characteristics. Bonding results in components of stiffness, dilatancy, strength and anisotropy that cannot be accounted solely from stress history. Therefore, it is essential that modern constitutive modelling takes into account these mechanisms and their anisotropic characteristics. This improves greatly the predictive capability of a constitutive model.
