In order to discuss the influence of stress history on the constitutive relations for soils,a series of drained conventional triaxial compression tests for normally consolidated and overconsolidated clays have been carried out.It is found through comparing the stress-strain relation curves under the different stress histories that the overconsolidated ratio is the determining factor for volumetric strain.The volumetric strain is less sensitive to consolidation pressure,however.For the shear capacity,the consolidation pressure is the determining factor,but the influence of the overconsolidated ratio can not be neglected since it determines whether there will be strain hardening or strain softening as well as the grade of strain softening.Despite that,the soil specimens will finally reach a unified critical state and approximately the same residual strength.According to the principle of interaction between plastic volumetric and shear strains,the mechanism of generating two types of stress-strain relation curves for clays is explained.It is shown that the critical state is a pure process of shearing deformation in which the interaction between plastic volumetric and shear strains completely disappears.The critical state is independent of the previous stress history.