A note on Taylor's interlocking and

Terzaghi’s "true cohesion" error

This note was published in Geotechnical News Vol 17 No 4 December 1999.

A note on Taylor's interlocking and Terzaghi’s "true cohesion" error.

Andrew N. Schofield, Cambridge University Engineering Department.

A section in the new biography of Terzaghi (Goodman 1999 page 212) explains that,
directly after publication of Terzaghi "Theoretical Soil Mechanics" (1943), Terzaghi
and Peck began to write a new book as an "Introduction" to it. On page 213
Goodman reports that the writers were frustrated by the "unfinished state of soil
mechanics" and that progress with this book was delayed. The process of rewrite,
review, and alteration dragged on year after year until 1946, when a very different
book, Terzaghi and Peck (1948), neared completion. At that stage ‘The authors, now
mutually trusting and united, ganged up on what they perceived as an increasingly
theoretical and esoteric portrayal of soils in university education, as depicted in
Ralph Peck’s review of the book manuscript from Professor Donald Taylor of MIT
"Blind application of theory can directly lead to disaster" he wrote: "this is the idea
which nearly ruined soil mechanics and against which the best efforts of Terzaghi
and a few others have only recently been able to make headway."’

All three textbooks proved useful. For example, in Cambridge University, Roscoe’s
lectures to 3rd year undergraduates in 1950 were based on Terzaghi (1943). In 1954
Roscoe’s research students studied Taylor (1948), as well as the internationally
recognised work of Terzaghi’s research student Hvorslev (1937). In 1958 I
introduced a 2nd year course on soil mechanics based on Terzaghi and Peck (1948).
All our undergraduate soil mechanics teaching followed Terzaghi closely, but the
great influences on our research were Hvorslev’s thesis and Taylor’s work on
interlocking. They led directly to "Critical State Soil Mechanics", Schofield and
Wroth (1968).
When the Concise Oxford Dictionary applies "esoteric" to philosophical doctrines
etc. it means "only for the initiated", and critical state theories are esoteric in the
sense that many geotechnical engineers were initiated into these theories after
graduation. However, only a few initiates in North America will have read about
Terzaghi’s "true cohesion" error in the August 1998 issue of "Ground Engineering",
Schofield (1998), and this note aims to link that issue to a section of Goodman’s
book between pp 63-83. Terzaghi's book Erdbaumechanik, about his system of
effectively stressed soil mechanics, was based on his own research work from 1917
to 1923 while he was a university lecturer. He published Theoretical Soil Mechanics
20 years later after much experience of successful application of his system in
practice. Both these books contained an error that he had made and needed to detect,
and his chance came with a new insight on interlocking in a new book by Taylor, one
of the next generation of young lecturers who in their turn undertook research on
their own as university lecturers. Taylor’s qualities led Terzaghi to select him to
become Secretary General for the ISSMFE Conference in Zurich, but Taylor died of
cancer and his chance to correct Terzaghi’s error was gone. Taylor did not live to
continue work in the MIT laboratory and the error eluded "the observational method"
in the field.

Terzaghi’s error can be explained as follows. Figure 14.2 in Taylor’s book shows data
of shear box tests of dense sand during shear. Interlocking causes dense sand to dilate
in the initial strain increments. Taylor calculates (pp 346, 347) the rate at which work
must be done to increase soil volume at peak shear strength of sand. He shows that
the peak is due to addition of an interlocking strength component to the shearing
friction component. Taylor did not question the Mohr Coulomb equation, but the idea
he proposed for sand also applies to the clay tested by Hvorslev. When Terzaghi and
Hvorslev plotted their peak strength data to give a straight line and interpreted the
values of the slope and intercept of this line as "true" friction and cohesion
components they had no interlocking component of peak strength. Terzaghi’s error in
adopting the Mohr Coulomb equation and in proposing that soils have ‘true cohesion’
was to ignore the effects of interlocking that are clearly observed in the field and in
the laboratory.
Over consolidation of clay soil forms a dense interlocked aggregate of fine soil
grains. Dilation of this aggregate is unstable and is localised in loosened and softened
"gouge" material on thin planes of progressive failure. Dilation during distortion of
the aggregate of grains requires increase of water content and of volume in gouge
material. A volume increase requires work to push back external pressures. The shear
box test gave no data of the rate of dilation on the slip planes at the time of failure.
Terzaghi and Hvorslev thought of only two components of peak strength of clay;
cohesion and friction. They and Taylor knew that gouge material in stiff over
consolidated clay becomes "slick" as water is sucked in to it, but they did not
appreciate that it is the work done to suck water slowly into that slick soil paste that
also causes the peak strength. Stiff clay and dense sand are both dense aggregates of
soil grains, deriving strength from mechanical interlock. This strength involves the
strain factor that Terzaghi knew must be introduced in earth pressure calculations. He
discussed it in the 1936 ISSMFE conference but did not see that interlocking must be
present whenever softening and water content increase are observed in the field.
Interlocking strength components can be present in undisturbed soil, acting in
addition to any strength components due to cementing, ageing and creep.

If any idea "nearly ruined soil mechanics" it is Mohr’s idea of circles of stress at
rupture having an envelope that can be defined by a function of stress, unrelated to
strain. In 1936 Terzaghi called this Mohr’s "hypothesis"; he saw that it involved a
bold approximation, but did not see why it is untrue. If plane failure of soil could be
defined by any function of the three components of plane stress then that function
plus the two equations of equilibrium would form a hyperbolic system of three
equations in three unknown stress components. For given stress boundary conditions
the solution is a plane limiting stress field independent of strains. He observed earth
pressures that depended on strain, but what was the error in the system of equations?
It had to be an error in Mohr’s hypothesis. It is not a simple matter of a curved
envelope rather than the straight line Mohr Coulomb equation. The rupture of dense
soil is an instability phenomenon, like buckling, that depends on strain boundary
conditions. There is no unique envelope to Mohr’s circles. A failure criterion can not
be defined in stress space.
Rather than introduce an apparent cohesion of soil that is itself a function of strain, it
is better to characterise peak strength as the sum of the critical state angle of repose
plus a dilation angle; this interlocking strain rate depends on effective pressure and
relative density. On the dry side of critical states the dilation angle is positive. The
opposite effect is observed if the soil is initially on the wet side of critical states.
Roscoe, Schofield, and Wroth (1958) used test paths to critical states to explain water
content changes in drained triaxial tests and pore-pressure changes in undrained tests.
The rate at which work is done in general triaxial tests was analysed by Roscoe,
Schofield and Thurairajah (1963). Volumes tend to decrease as loose soil yields.
There are rates at which external effective pressure does work in volume reduction,
and rates of change of elastic energy stored in the aggregate of grains, and rates at
which work is input in shear distortion. Together these must equal the rate at which
work is dissipated in critical state friction in shear distortion under the mean effective
pressure. This analysis was the basis of a stable yield function (Roscoe and Schofield
1963) for an ideal fine-grained soil at first called wet clay and later called Cam clay
(Schofield and Togrol 1966). Schofield and Wroth (1968) wrote a textbook on this
body of knowledge, and taught that the strength of soil on a drained or an undrained
path at and near critical states is simple. In the first case the strength is defined by a
drained friction angle