Understanding
this distinction is vital in mechanics of materials. For materials such as
metals, we often talk of a yield strength, which is a single stress beyond
which the material can be expected to experience permanent (or plastic)
deformation. In fact it is only for a very limited series of loading situations
that one can directly compare a single yield stress with a single value of
stress one calculates as occurring in the material. In modelling continuum
materials, as we do in soil mechanics, the strength rules (often called yield
or failure criteria) are written in terms of all stresses acting at a point (on
the infinitesimal cube) considering all three dimensions.
Brittle failure (Fig. 8.3b) is characterised as sudden fracturing with very
little apparent plastic deformation; glass being a classic brittle material.
Analysis of brittle failure is more complex than the ductile failure described
above, largely because the process of brittle failure involves a sudden transfer
of energy. Engineering fracture analysis tends to focus on the assumption
of cracks of a certain length being present in a material and then answering
the question: will those cracks get larger (propagate)? The material property
most commonly used to assess this in metals is the fracture toughness KIC; a
value that is compared to a stress intensity factor calculated using the applied
stresses. This is a complex procedure to consider applying to non-metallic
materials and is not considered in this way for soils and rocks. Instead a
simpler approach is sometimes taken so that cracking is assumed to occur
when the soil is subjected to tensile stresses (soil often being assumed to
have no tensile strength).
For earthen construction materials we are almost always focused on strength
rather than stiffness. While structures built from earth will deform due to
applied loads (mostly due to the weight of the earth itself) these movements
are generally insignificant and we are mostly concerned with the likelihood
of failure. Therefore in what follows we will focus on strength, its sources
and its measurement in these materials.