Triaxial behaviour of transversely isotropic materials: application to sedimentary rocks

Failure and long‐term behaviour of oriented solids are studied. Transversely isotropic materials are considered and a mathematical formulation that respect the material symmetry is developed and applied to model the triaxial behaviour of sedimentary rocks. Two failure criteria and a viscoplastic constitutive model that describe, respectively, triaxial failure and triaxial creep tests are presented and discussed. The application of the developed models to describe the mechanical behaviour of Tournemire shale shows that theoretical predictions are in good agreement with the experimental data. In the present paper, the developed approach is applied to sedimentary rock materials, nevertheless, it can be generalized to any material that exhibits transverse isotropy. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.