Numerical modeling of complex geotechnical problems usually requires an advanced 3D-discretization and requires a sophisticated constitutive soil model. Some complex constitutive models lead to analyses of practical structures becoming computationally expensive. Hence, it would be wiser to assign the more sophisticated hierarchical models to the zones which are highly influenced by geotechnical processes spatially and temporally. On the other hand, the regions with less stress/strain concentration can be numerically solved using simpler models. This approach which reduces the computational effort considerably is called here ’adaptive’ constitutive modeling. It leads to an optimum-accurate numerical analysis by concentrating on the important selected factors of soil behavior such as stress dependent stiffness, hardening and softening plasticity, stiffness at small strains, anisotropy etc. in a small region of the mesh. This paper presents the first step to develop a conceptual approach for adaptive constitutive modeling of soils in numerical analyses with finite element method (FEM). To achieve this, a number of numerical soil element tests were simulated to assess the effects of employing the adaptive constitutive soil modeling on the results and the features which should be precisely taken into account in this process. The results of present study provides the basic and initial concept of proposed approach. Finally, a sample geotechnical application that can be simplified by the use of this approach is introduced.
