LECTURE 5

TOTAL and EFFECTIVE

STRESS

STRESSES IN A SOIL MASS

• A load acting on a soil mass, whether
internal, due to its self-weight, or external,
due to a load applied at a soil boundary,
creates stresses within the soil.
• To study the stability or deformations of
the surrounding soil, as a result of the
external loads, it is often necessary to
know the stresses within the soil mass.

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Soil components affecting Geostatic Stresses

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• Elastic solutions are quite popular in
geotechnical engineering.
• In these solutions, the entire soil masses
are assumed to be continuous elastic
media, and the theory of elasticity is
applied to determine the state of stress at
a point.
• However, soils do not deform elastically.
Therefore, the elastic solutions should only
be used with caution.
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Effective Stress Concept

• In saturated soils, the normal stress (σ) at any point
within the soil mass is shared by the soil grains and the
water held within the voids/pores.
• The component of the normal stress acting on the soil
grains, is called effective stress or intergranular stress,
and is generally denoted by σ'.
• The remainder of the normal stress acting on the pore
water, is knows as pore water pressure or neutral
stress, and is denoted by u.
• Thus, the TOTAL STRESS at any point within the soil
mass can be written as:
• NOTE: Water cannot carry any shear stress, and therefore
the shear stress in a soil element is carried by the soil
grains only.
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• In a dry soil, there is no pore water pressure and the
total stress is the same as effective stress.

Vertical Stress due to overburden

In a dry soil mass having a unit weight of γ, the normal
vertical stress at a depth of h is simply γh.
If there is a uniform surcharge q placed at the
ground level, this stress becomes γh+q.

Overburden stress at a point in a

layered soil
In a soil mass with, say, three different soil
layers as shown in the Figure below the vertical
normal stress at X is γ1h1 + γ2h2 + γ3h3.

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 Overburden stress at a point in a
homogeneous saturated soil

•For simplicity assume that the water table is at the

ground level.
•Let the saturated unit weight and submerged unit
of the soil be γsat and γ′ respectively.
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The total vertical normal stress at X (fig above) is given by:

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 Overburden stresses at a point when the
water table is below the ground level

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Pore & Air Pressure issues

a. Negative pore pressure (suction)
• Below the water table,
pore pressures are
positive.
• In dry soil, the pore
pressure is zero.
• Just above the water
table, i.e. above the
saturated soil, pore
pressure will ideally be
negative, i.e.
u = - γw.h (suction state)
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 b. Pore water and pore air pressure
• A further ideal situation is the
existence of a partially
saturated zone above the
suction zone. The pores in this
zone contain a mixture of
water and air
• The pore pressure in this zone
consists of two components:
– porewater pressure = uw
– pore-air pressure = ua
• Note: water is incompressible,
but air is compressible. The
combined effect is a complex
relationship involving partial
pressures and the degree of
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saturation of the soil

The partially saturated soil condition:

• A complex situation
• The normal stress within a soil element is
carried by the water, air, and the soil grains.
• The normal stress can thus be split into
three components and written as below,

• where:
o uw and ua are the pore water pressure and pore air
pressures respectively,
o χ is a constant that can be determined from triaxial
test and varies between 0 and 1.
o In dry soils χ=0 and in saturated soils χ=1.
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 CAPILLARY EFFECTS IN SOIL

• The height above the water table over

which the soil is (partially) saturated
defines the capillary rise.
• The capillary rise depends on the grain
size and type (and thus the size of pores):
in coarse soils capillary rise is very small
in silts it may be up to 2m
in clays it can be over 20m

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CAPILLARY EFFECTS IN SOILS - concept

If a capillary tube is placed in

a dish containing water as
shown in the Figure, water
immediately rises to a height
of hc within the tube
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The water column is held by the surface tension T at
the top (see inset), which acts at an angle of α to
vertical.
For equilibrium of the water column, the weight of the
water column is balanced by the vertical components
of the surface tension.
This can be written as:

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• Using typical values of T = 0.073 N/m, α = 0°

and γw = 9810 N/m3, it can be shown that:

• In soils, the interconnected voids can act like

capillary tubes (not straight though) and allow
the water to rise well above the water table.
• The “capillary tube” diamater of a soil is
approximately 1/5 of D10.

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• Therefore, the capillary rise within a soil can be
written as:

• The finer the soil, the smaller the capillary tube

diameter, and larger the capillary rise.
• Gravels are so coarse that there will be negligible
capillary effects.
• Capillary rise can be few millimetres in sands to
several metres in clays.
• Capillary pressure is a pore water pressure that is
always negative. Since this occurs while there is no
change in total stress, it increases the effective
stresses significantly
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Example
Plot the variation of total and effective vertical
stresses, and pore water pressure with depth for
the soil profile shown

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 Solution
• Within a soil layer, the unit weight is constant,
and therefore the stresses vary linearly.
• Therefore, it is adequate if we compute the
values at the layer interfaces and water table
location, and join them by straight lines.

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Summary of values of σv, u and σv’
in Example

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Plot of total stress, pore water pressure &

effective stress

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