This paper presents a framework to describe the constitutive behaviour of geotechnical materials in the context of multiplicative finite strain. A suitable energy function is chosen allowing the hyperelastic response to be energy conserving. The corresponding tangent modulus is derived to ensure quadratic rates of convergence of the Newton-Raphson procedure in the finite element solution. Standard element tests are given to demonstrate the performance of the algorithms developed. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.