Strength of Intact Geomechanical Materials

The strength of geomechanical materials can be described by a number of strength criteria. However, each criterion is usually limited to certain material types with a limited range of stress conditions. A new empirical strength criterion is proposed and shown to apply to a wide range of intact materials, from lightly overconsolidated clays through hard rocks, for both compressive and tensile stress regions. It is demonstrated that the strengths of these widely differing materials follow a distinctive progressive pattern.