ABSTRACT
Due to the manner in which natural soils are deposited, it is logical to expect them to exhibit approximately transversely isotropic response. While this realization is not new, the lack of suitable experimental apparatus to accurately measure the five elastic constants associated with transverse isotropy has, in the past, precluded the use of such idealizations. More recently, substantial progress has been made in experimental techniques that facilitate the measurement of the aforementioned elastic constants. The development of elastic constitutive relations for transversely isotropic geomaterials is complicated by the fact that the elastic material parameters are usually not constant. The elastic strain increments will thus be related to the stress increments through compliance matrices that are functions of the instantaneous stress state, the stress history and so forth. Since the response is thus rendered stress path-dependent, only hypoelastic constitutive models are thought to be relevant. Some of these models are reviewed and assessed in this paper.
