Abstract: A new approach based on the effective stress and physical states for analyzing the seismic response of soil was emphasized as the center of this paper on the wide basis of discussing current analytic methods.The first one was the effective stress-physical state dynamic constitutive relationships established on the revealed dynamic stress-strain characteristics.It could be used to consider the soil properties of non-linearity,hardening,shear dilatation-contraction,compression-swelling,as well as the soil properties of stress path dependence and coupling of spherical stress to deviator stress.The second achievement of this research was the fundamentals of a 3-D dynamic consolidation with governing equations established on the basis of the transient dynamic theory,characterized by combining the effective stress and physical states dynamic constitutive relationships and coupling the dynamic response and dynamic consolidation,static stress and dynamic stress,generation,diffusion and dissipation of pore water pressure so as to simulate the actual process of stress-strain response of soil mass and form a complete theoretical framework system of the seismic response analysis approach based on the effective stress and physical states of soil mass.Finally,a new 3-D dynamic consolidation FEM calculation program was developed,and inspected through seismic analysis of a saturated road foundation,not only the reasonable soil properties were obtained,but also the validity of the proposed method and program were proved.