SUMMARYThis article is an attempt at providing an insight into the development of hypoplasticity (including barodesy, which is a recent development of hypoplasticity) as a theory elaborated since 1977, when the first version was published by the first author, until present. The multiplicity of the many versions published since then is hard to overlook. This article presents a review and insight into the evolution of a theory and the struggle to formulate a satisfactory constitutive law. Among the many proposed versions, we focus on those ones that can be seen as changes of paradigm. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
ON THE DIVERSITY OF CONSTITUTIVE MODELSA constitutive law (or 'constitutive relation' or 'constitutive model') is a theory that describes the mechanical behaviour of a material or class of materials, in our case, soil (and other granular materials). Some scientific communities use the alternative term 'closure equation', as a constitutive equation provides the missing link that is needed next to the balance laws of physics to solve a boundary value problem. Being a theory, a constitutive law is virtually an assumption that can be used as long as it has not been disproved. It is, however, not so straightforward to judge upon falsification of a theory. In the realm of physics, mechanics and, in our case, soil mechanics, theories have always a limited range of validity. Thus, the question whether a particular experimental outcome discredits a theory or not can also be considered as the question whether this outcome falls within the range of validity of the considered theory. Moreover, there is always a deviation between theoretical predictions and experimental outcomes. It is often a subjective judgement whether a deviation is considered as small or large. For these reasons, a constitutive law cannot be simply rated as 'right' or 'wrong', there are many nuances between these attributes. In case a constitutive law provides a prediction judged as non-satisfactory, the question arises whether the shortage can be removed by a modification or it is due to an inherent conceptual failure of the underlying theory. Thus, theories can be either modified or abandoned and replaced by completely new ones.The emergence of a new version not only signifies an improvement but also blames the precedent version for inadequacy. It underlines thus the feeling that a constitutive relation does not mirror a permanent truth. Similar mixed feelings are evoked whenever a new operational system is launched for our computer: the expectation of improved performance is counterbalanced by the displeasure for the necessary rearrangements. In the end, we should realize that perfection is achievable neither for operational systems nor for constitutive relations. The possibility of modifications proves, however, that a given system or theory can still be useful.It should be mentioned that we have refrained from assessing each version by mentioning its advantages and disadvantages, as this would render the paper overly long and is ...