Water stress and pressure in soils
Water in the soil

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 V₁ and V₂ of this solid are themselves in equilibrium under the action of external forces applied directly to them and internal forces representing the effect on V₁ of forces applied to V₂...