Abstract: The deformation and failure process of natural soil under loading can be obtained by research on structured clay ,on which the design of construction and soil improvement can be based when the structural influence is considered. With the construction of high, deep and great buildings, the research on the structured soil has recently become more and more important. In this paper, the researches of structured clay on micro deformation mechanism, artificial preparation, civil engineering behavior and numerical models are introduced. Processing in situ test, artificial preparation of structured soil, measuring methods of meso-structural parameters,numerical methods considering meso-structure and establishing macro-constitutive models considering micro- deformation mechanism are the important problems of study on the structured soil.

Key words: structured clay, micro deformation mechanism, civil engineering behavior；numerical models