CE 332

GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING I

Lecture 1: Stress in the ground (Total & Effective

Stresses within a soil mass)

Mrs Honoria Homu-Hedziga

Room 116
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Learning objectives

•Define the principle of effective stress and explain its

significance
•Calculate values of total and effective stresses acting at
some location
•Calculate values of total and effective horizontal stress
acting at some location
•Explain some of the difficulties that might be associated
with the practical application of effective stress

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Stresses in the ground

•Soil is composed of 3 phases (solid grains, pore fluid and air)

•Despite the complexity of soil, we will try to apply “normal”
concepts to it to understand its engineering behaviour
•Soil can be visualised as a skeleton of solid particles
enclosing continuous voids which contain water and/or air.

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Stresses in the ground

•The volume of the soil skeleton as a whole can change due to

rearrangement of the soil particles into new positions, mainly
by rolling and sliding, with a corresponding change in the
forces acting between particles.
•The compressibility of soil depends on the structural
arrangement of the solid particles (solids + water are
incompressible, while air is highly compressible)
•In a fully saturated soil, a reduction in volume occurs if water
escapes from the voids
•In a dry or partially saturated soil, a reduction in volume will
always occur due to compression of air in the voids

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Stresses in the ground

•What is the stress acting between the tamper and the table?

= F/A
 = mg/r2
 = (0.35 * 9.81)(/*0.0292)
 = 1.3 kN/m2

We used the full tamper mass, but

we could have considered the
volume & densities of the
components.
Because mass = density * volume
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Vertical stresses in the ground
•Remember that soil is composed
of different materials
2 phase or 3 phase
•Are the stresses in each likely to
be the same?
•What makes a solid different
from a fluid or a gas?
- solids can resist shear
- solids and fluids are
near incompressible
• The total normal stress () on a
plane within the soil mass, is the
force per unit area transmitted in a
normal direction across the plane6
Vertical stresses in the ground – Total stress

•When a load is applied to a soil, it is carried by the solid

grains and the water in the pores. The total vertical stress acting
at a point below the ground surface is due to the weight of
everything that lies above, including soil, water and surface
loading. Total stress thus increases with depth and with unit
weight.

Vertical total stress at depth

z,
v = g*z where g is the
weight

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Vertical stresses in the ground – Total stress

•Below a water body, the total stress is the sum of the weight
of the soil up to the surface and the weight of water above
this.
v = g*z + gw*zw where gw is
the weight of water and zw is
the depth of water

The total stress varies with

changes in water level and
with excavation

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Vertical stresses in the ground – Pore water pressure
•The pressure of water in the pores of the soil is called pore
water pressure (u). The magnitude of pore water pressure
depends on:
–depth below the water table
–The conditions of seepage flow
Under hydrostatic conditions,
no water flow takes place, and
the pore pressure at a given
point is given by u = w * h
where h = depth below water
table or overlying water
surface
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Vertical stresses in the ground – Pore water pressure

•For convenience, we can think of pore water pressure as the

pressure exerted by a column of water in an imaginary
standpipe inserted at the given point
•The water table (phreatic surface) is the natural level of
ground water. The water table is horizontal under conditions
of no seepage flow. The magnitude of the pore water pressure
at the water table is zero. Below the water table pore water
pressures are positive

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Fluid pressure in the ground

•Soil is three dimensional

•Pore connectivity
We refer to the fluid
pressures in the soil as the
“pore pressure” or the
“pore water pressure” and
give it the symbol u

The pore water pressure (u), is the pressure of the water

filling the void space between the solid particles

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Fluid pressures

At a point, the fluid pressure acts equally in all directions

In a continuous fluid at rest, any
two points at the same elevation
are at the same pressure

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Vertical stresses in the ground

•Imagine we want to calculate the stress acting in the vertical

direction (i.e. up/down) at some depth, z m below the
ground surface. The water table is at zwt m below the surface,
and the soil has a unit weight a above the WT and b below
it.
•Imagine a tiny block of soil with
plan area, A, at the depth of
interest
Weight of soil above block,
Wsoil = a*A * zwt + b *A*(z- zwt)
v = Wsoil/A
v = [(a*A * zwt + b *A*(z-
zwt))/A]
v =( a * zwt )+( b *(z- zwt)) 13
Vertical stresses in the ground

We could consider a similar situation where the soil surface

lay below the water (in a lake). If the soil below the water
table has unit weight  and the water has unit weight w, what
would be the vertical stress acting at a depth z below the
surface of the lake?

v = (w * zwt )+( *(z- zwt))

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Fluid pressure in the ground

Now we can consider what the fluid pressure would be at

some depth, z in the ground.

Water pressure is 0 at the

“water table”

So how much stress is carried

by the soil skeleton?

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Vertical stresses in the ground – Effective stress

Now imagine we want to know how much stress is carried in

the soil skeleton at some depth, z below the ground surface.
(Unit weight = a above the water table and b below it).
•What about friction on the sides
of the column of soil?
•What is the stress required to
support the soil column?
•Stresses on base: pore water
pressure (u) and stress in soil in the
vertical direction
•Stress transmitted through the soil
skeleton is called the effective normal
stress (’) 16
Vertical stresses in the ground – Effective stress

•We call the stress carried in the soil skeleton the “effective
stress”
•The stresses in the soil skeleton are direction dependent
In the vertical direction: v = ’v + u
In the horizontal direction: h = ’h + u

Karl Terzaghi (1923) presented the principle of effective stress

which only applies to fully saturated soils and relates to the
normal stress, pore water pressure & effective normal stress

The relationship between the three stresses is:

 = ’ + u
The soil skeleton is the part that can carry shear loading 17
Vertical stresses in the ground – Effective stress

•At any point in a soil mass, the effective stress (’)is related to
total stress () and pore water pressure (u) as ’ =  - u
•Total stress and pore water pressure can be measure at any
point
•All measurable efforts of a change of stress, such as
compression and a change of shearing resistance, are
exclusively due to changes in effective stress
•In saturated soils, the voids are filled with water and pore
water pressure acts equally in all directions
•Effective stress is not the exact contact between particles,
rather the distribution of load carried by the soil particles over
the area considered
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Vertical stresses in the ground – Effective stress

•Applying an additional load to the soil tends to increase the

total stress with the pore water pressure also increasing to
counteract the additional stress. Increase in pressure within
the pores may cause water to drain out of the soil mass, and
the load is transferred to the solid grains. This will lead to the
increase of effective stress.
•Above the water table, when the soil is saturated, pore
pressure will be negative.

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Vertical stresses in the ground

•Effective stress is often the most important clue as to

why things fail
•Effective stress is central to our modern understanding
of soil behaviour
•There are some practical difficulties because it assumes
that we know what the pore pressures are
•Some people like to talk about a “buoyant weight”
which allows you to directly calculate the effective stress.
’ =  - w

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Vertical stresses in the ground – Effective stress

•You are considering a site where you know that there are
layers of clay and sand, which you have already sketched out.
In the clay layers, you expect the unit weight to be 18 kN/m3
above and below the water table, while in the sand layer
(below the water table) it is 20 kN/m3. The water table is
thought to be at a depth of 2m. What is the vertical effective
stress at a depth of 6m?
’ =  - u where
= (18*3)+(20*2)+(18*1) = 112 kN/m3
u = 9.81*4 = 39.2 kN/m3
Strictly speaking, u should be expressed in
kPa because it is a pressure, while  is a
stress and should be in kN 21
Horizontal stresses in the ground

When we apply uniaxial stress to a material, it deforms in 3

directions

If there are a series of soil elements next to each other,

they will “push back” as the soil elements try to overlap.
This leads to creation of lateral stresses

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Horizontal stresses in the ground

We use an “earth pressure coefficient” (K) to link the

horizontal effective stresses to the vertical effective stress
’h = K’v
•K varies depending on past loading history!
•3 special case earth pressure coefficients
•Earth pressure coefficient at rest, Ko
•Active earth pressure coefficient, Ka
•Passive earth pressure coefficient, Kp
•Ko represents the insitu stress state
•For normally consolidated soils, Ko = 1 – sin() where 
is the angle of friction
•Ka and Kp represent failure conditions
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Horizontal stresses in the ground

Example
At some depth in the soil, the vertical effective stress is 85
kPa. Assuming that the earth pressure coefficient is
approximately 0.6, calculate the horizontal effective stress

’h = K’v
’h = 0.6 * 85
’h = 51 kPa

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