Abstract The tensile strength of a single soil particle is usually measured indirectly by compressing the grain betweenflat platens until failure occurs, and is defined as the tensile stress at whole-particle fracture. The tensile strength appearsto decrease monotonically with the diameter of particles, and is usually characterized by the Weibull statistics. Forgranular materials, it is impossible to measure constant tensile strength, unless the flaw effect is taken into account in the