Abstract: One of the key issues encountered in the strain localization and progressive failure analyses of slopes and retaining structures is how to describe properly the post-bifurcation response of soils. It has been found that the soil response measured globally in biaxial and triaxial tests may not be a unique material property of soils. It is therefore imperative to understand the post-bifurcation behavior of soils and to correctly simulate this behavior within a suitable mathematic framework. In this paper, the mechanical behavior of saturated soils in the localized mode is estimated through a homogenization technique and the average mechanical properties of a medium are intercepted by a shear band. Numerical predictions of plane strain compression of drained loose sand, untrained loose, medium dense and dense sands are in good agreement with the available biaxial test results.