Progressive failure of sand and its numerical simulation

It is well known that due to the strain softening behavior, the strain localization along with shear band formation will occur in the dense sand subjected to shearing under drained condition. In numerical simulation there are quite a lot of issues should be solved, such as how to simulate the strain softening behavior of dense sand and how to avoid the divergence problem in finite element analysis, and more over how to deal with the discontinuous of stress. The above mentioned issues are discussed in detail.