The Critical State Framework for Soil Behaviour: New insight from DEM Simulations presents the latest on a topic that was originally proposed by Schofield and Wroth in the 1960s, and has subsequently proven to be a very good framework to describe sand behavior. This framework uses the critical state, the void ratio and stress level attained by a soil at large shear deformations, as a reference state.

The particulate discrete element method (DEM) allows the fundamental basis of the critical state to be examined in detail. Using DEM simulations, this book considers the sensitivity of the critical state to particle scale parameters (friction) and overall conditions (3D stress state), also linking between overall behavior and particle scale mechanics. The simulation data is then analyzed to better understand the fundamental mechanisms.