2. Water stress and pressure in soils

2.1 Reminder of the notion of stress in a granular medium

The concept of stress belongs to continuum mechanics, which is used to describe the mechanical behavior of soils.

Constraints are introduced to ensure the internal equilibrium of solid bodies of continuous media: consider a solid body V of continuous medium, of any shape (figure 2 ), which is assumed to be cut into two parts by a surface S. If the solid V is in equilibrium under the action of external forces applied to it, the parts V ₁ and V ₂ of this solid are themselves in equilibrium under the action of external forces applied...