Local soil failure before general failure.

Slopes are generally characterized by non-uniform stress field. Additional stresses induced by changes in boundary conditions can emphasize local differences in the stress level. As a consequence, every failure process is, at first, local, with formation of plastic zones, then general. This is the subject of this paper, which concerns clay slopes, whose failure generally implies formation of a shear zone. A special consideration is addressed to the simple and special case of infinite slope which is also featured by transition from local to general failure, even if stress conditions are uniform along the potential failure plane.