An anisotropic plasticity clay model accounting for structural effects and overconsolidation

Natural soils such as clays exhibit a variety of features including anisotropy, destruction and overconsolidation. In this work, a constitutive model that is able to replicate those salient features of natural clays is presented. The model is based on the classical S-CLAY1 model, where the anisotropy of the soil is captured through the initial inclination and rotation of the yield surface. To account for overconsolidation, a parabolic Hvorslev envelope is adopted. The compression curve of the reconstituted soil is taken as the reference to describe the structural of the soil. Parameters of the proposed constitutive model all have clear physical meanings and can be conveniently determined from conventional triaixal tests. Numerical examples using the proposed model to simulate overconsolidated natural soils are presented and compared with existing experimental data, demonstrating the capability of the model.