ABSTRACT
Recent studies have shown that non saturated conditions have decisive influence on both, stiffness and strength. Regarding strength, experimental results conduced to a friction angle with respect to suction of 14° (Topa Gomes, 2009) and hence an equivalent cohesion for the classic Mohr-Coulomb failure criteria may be obtained by the following equation:
′ ′ +c c= sat a w( )− uu tan ( º )14 (1)
where c′sat = saturated effective cohesion and (ua − uw) = matric suction.
