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List of symbols used in this article

Following symbols are used below:
1 - principal stress in direction along first axis

2 - principal stress in direction along second axis

3 - principal stress in direction along third axis

0 - yield stress for single parametric yield surface

Rc - yield strength during compression

Rr - yield strength during tension

m - ratio of yield strengths

c - material cohesion
- stress coefficient
K - material stiffness for two parametric yield surface (Rc,Rr)

Tresca - Guest yield surface

This is the most simple yield surface, Henri Tresca is assumed as it's author. But also it is
referred as TG criterion. In principal stresses it is expressed as follows:

Figure 1 shows TG criterion in three dimensional space of principal stresses. It is a prism of

infinite length and six sides. This means that material remains elastic when all three principal
stresses are roughly equivalent (a hydrostatic pressure), no matter how much compressed or
stretched. But when the material is subject to shearing, one of principal stresses becomes
smaller (or bigger), then the yield surface is crossed and material enters plastic domain.

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Figure 1: View of Tresca-Guest criterion in 3D space of principal stresses

Figure 2 shows Tresca-Guest criterion in two dimensional space, it is a cross section of prism
along the 1,2 plane.

Figure 2: Tresca-Guest criterion in 2D space

(1,2)

Huber - Mises - Hencky, also known as Prandtl - Rauss yield

surface
This is another simple yield surface, this explains why it has so many authors. Who is the real
author depends on the university, although often it is credited to Maximilian Huber and
Richard von Mises (see von Mises stress). It is also referred as HMH criterion. It is expressed
as follows:

Also it can be expressed in non-principal stresses as below:

Figure 3 shows HMH criterion in three dimensional space of principal stresses. It is a circular
cylinder of infinite length, with the same angle to all three axes.

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Figure 3: View of Huber-Mises-Hencky criterion in 3D space of principal stresses

Figure 4 shows Huber-Mises-Hencky criterion in two dimensional space compared with

Tresca-Guest criterion. HMH is a cross section of this cylinder on the plane of 1,2, which
produces an ellipse.

Figure 4: Comparison of Tresca-Guest and Huber-MisesHencky criteria in 2D space (1,2)

Mohr - Coulomb yield surface

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It is a first two-parametric yield surface, the parameters are Rc and Rr which are the
maximum values for compression and tension for given material. This model is often used to
model concrete, soil or granular materials. This model is the first one that takes shearing into
account. It is expressaed as follows:

To plot this surface on Fig. 5 the following formula was used:

Figure 5 shows Mohr-Coulomb criterion in three dimensional space of principal stresses. It is

a conical prism. If K = 0 then it becomes Tresca-Guest criterion, thus K determines the
inclination angle of conical surface.

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Figure 5: View of Mohr-Coulomb criterion in 3D space of principal stresses

Figure 6 shows Mohr-Coulomb criterion in two dimensional space, it is a cross section of this
conical prism on the plane of 1,2, which produces a shape shown below.

Figure 6: Mohr-Coulomb criterion in 2D space

(1,2)

Drucker - Prager yield surface

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This criterion is most often used for concrete, both normal and shear stresses are taken into
account.

Figure 7 shows Drucker-Prager criterion in three dimensional space of principal stresses. It is

a regular cone.

Figure 5: View of Drucker-Prager criterion in 3D space of principal stresses

Figure 8 shows Drucker-Prager criterion in two dimensional space, it is a cross section of this
cone on the plane of 1,2, which produces an ellipsioidal shape. It is compared here with
Mohr-Colulomb criterion.

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Figure 8: Drucker-Prager and Mohr-Coluomb

criterions in 2D space (1,2)

Brestler - Pister criterion

This criterion is a first criterion that uses three parameters. It is similar to HMH criterion but
additional parameter affects the cylinder radius using an x2 function. Thus cylinder's section
along its axis is no longer a rectangle (or rather two parallel lines, since the cylinder has
infinite length) but a parabola.

Willam - Warnke criterion

This is the most advanced yield surface, it takes the idea from Brestler - Pister a bit further
and applies it to Mohr-Colulomb criterion. The resulting surface is smooth (unlike MohrColulumb) and has first and second derivative fully defined on every point of its surface
which is an important property. This smoothness allows optimisations during calculations
when searching for a yield point on the surface (using gradient method for instance).

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