The invention is a method for modeling material behavior, including methods and systems for modeling stress and strain effects in soil, by inducing a non-uniform stress and strain in a material sample using a testing device, and measuring sample data with the testing device. A subsequent method step includes training a self-organizing computational model (such as a neural network) with the data to learn a non-uniform behavior for the material. The empirical data may be obtained, for example, from a field-testing device or a laboratory-testing device.