Sensitivity Analysis of Selected Input Parameters for an Advanced Constitutive Model

Experimental results and simulated behavior of a medium plasticity clay were compared to investigate the performance of an advanced soil constitutive model. The soil model employed for this study was the 3-SKH model. The performance of this model was compared to the performance of two other critical state models; the Cam Clay (CC) and Modified Cam Clay (MCC) models. In addition, the influences of some of the input parameters on the performance of the 3-SKH model were investigated by performing sensitivity analyses. The comparisons demonstrated that the CC model was able to predict normally consolidated compressive behavior of the remolded medium plasticity clay. The compression behavior of overconsolidated clay was better captured by both the 3-SKH and CC models. For extension behavior of the normally consolidated samples, the MCC model performed better than the CC and 3-SKH models in predicting the stress path. The 3-SKH model was found to be very sensitive to varying the exponent in the hardening function. In particular, a difference between the evaluated values as small as 0.01 had a noticeable effect on the predicted stress–strain values for the overconsolidated compression and extension samples.