Abstract The arching effect in soils consists on the redistribution of stresses from a yielding portion of the soil mass to more rigid regions. This article presents the results of an experimental and numerical study of the arching effect in soils. The experimental study is based on Terzaghi’s trapdoor test. The displacement field of the soil is estimated using the Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique and some displacement transducers. The stress redistribution is assessed using several load cells. The numerical study compares two elastoplastic constitutive models of increasing complexity and examines their ability to reproduce this phenomenon. The goal is to select the constitutive model that better reproduces this phenomenon to be later used for more complex situations.