A failure criterion emphasizing deformation history effects is formulated as a viable means of characterizing fracture strength of some materials with fading memory. Particular application is made to snow, a nonlinear viscoelastic material that exhibits a high degree of compressibility. The failure theory is expressed as a functional on the history of the deviatoric and volumetric stress powers by means of a multiple integral expansion. Torsion tests and uniaxial compression tests are conducted to adjust the functional to failure data. Test results indicate that, in the case of snow, strength is closely associated with deformation history and that a failure functional of stress power can accurately characterize fracture properties of snow. Additionally, it is noted that the fracture condition contains a volumetric contribution as well as a deviatoric one, indicating that volumetric strength of snow is limited.
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Brown et al. (1973) studied this question.