Animating Soil Mechanics
Visualizations as open educational tools for soil mechanics
With this project, I aim to facilitate teaching and understanding soil mechanics through visualizations. All visualizations are shared under the open CC BY license, and I am glad if you use them for teaching and learning.
Contact: Gertraud Medicus, gertraud.medicus@uibk.ac.at
Over the past years, I have received many messages and valuable feedback about the project Animating Soil Models (soilmodels.com/soilanim/) – by email, on LinkedIn and Twitter, at conferences and in different courses. This feedback motivated me to start this project Animating Soil Mechanics. Thank you all very much!
I further thank David Mašín for his support here on the platform SoilModels.com
The textbooks that inspired the visualizations:
- Kolymbas, Dimitrios (2019): Geotechnik: Bodenmechanik, Grundbau und Tunnelbau. 5th edition. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer Vieweg. DOI:
10.1007/978-3-662-58472-9. - Fellin, Wolfgang (2019): Geotechnik – Lernen mit Beispielen. Advances in Geotechnical Engineering and Tunnelling, Vol. 25. Berlin: Logos Verlag.
ISBN 978-3-8325-4897-1. - Muir Wood, David (2009): Soil Mechanics: A One-Dimensional Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 978-0-521-74132-3. - Verruijt, Arnold (2001): Soil Mechanics. Delft University of Technology. Available as an electronic textbook:
PDF.
The interactive graphic below has been created with GeoGebra
The interactive graphic below has been created with GeoGebra
Shearing of layers of circular discs, based on Muir Wood (2009)
The interactive graphics below have been created with GeoGebra
Coulomb’s active earth pressure, wall friction δ = 0
Active earth pressure, wall friction δ = 0, c = 0
upcoming
The interactive graphics below have been created with GeoGebra
You can use the slider for variation of the radius. In addition, it is possible to move the point A (blue bullet) and the center C (black bullet). Sign convention: Tensile stresses (+), compressive stresses (-), for more details on sign convention, see for example Mang & Hofstetter (2013).
click to enlarge, the Figure is based on Mang & Hofstetter (2013)
This figure might help to illustrate the link between Mohr’s circles and stress paths, using a conventional drained triaxial compression test. The Mohr-Coulomb failure line for c=0 is shown and the stress state can be adjusted using the slider.
for mechanical sign convention, tensile stresses (+), compressive stresses (-): click to enlarge
for geotechnical sign convention, tensile stresses (-), compressive stresses (+): click to enlarge
Use the sliders to vary the parameters c and φ. You can also adjust the minor principal stress σ₃ for a given σ₁=-100 kPa until the Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion is reached.
for mechanical sign convention, tensile stresses (+), compressive stresses (-): click to enlarge
for geotechnical sign convention, tensile stresses (-), compressive stresses (+): click to enlarge
upcoming
