Numerical simulations of simple shear with non‐coaxial soil models

This paper investigates the effects of a non‐coaxial model on simulated stress–strain behaviour of granular materials subject to simple shearing under various initial conditions. In most cases, a significant difference of predictions between coaxial and non‐coaxial modelling is found during the early stage in shearing. With the increase in shearing, non‐coaxial simulations approach and tend to coincide with coaxial simulations. It is also found that the roles of non‐coaxial modelling in simulating simple shear behaviour are considerably influenced by hardening rules, flow rules, initial static lateral pressure coefficients. In some cases, the non‐coaxial modelling gives a similar simulation as the coaxial modelling. In other cases, the non‐coaxial modelling decreases the hardening response or softening response of materials, compared with the coaxial modelling. Under certain conditions, the predicted peak strength of materials with non‐coaxial modelling is larger than that for coaxial modelling. Some of these observations can be attributed to the amount of principal stress rotation in various cases analysed. Others can be attributed to the difference between the directions of the non‐coaxial plastic flow and those for coaxial plastic flow. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

一种基于热力学原理的密砂模型

从热力学定律出发,利用自由能函数和耗散函数,通过严格的理论推导得到屈服函数、流动法则和硬化规律。在临界状态模型的框架内,将基于热力学基础的各向异性模型和特定的旋转硬化规律结合起来,提出了一种新的处理方法用来模拟密砂在三轴试验中的变形曲线。给定多组模型参数,计算排水和不排水三轴试验,并简单讨论了模型参数对曲线规律的影响,结果表明这种方法是有效的。通过屈服面在变形不同阶段采用不同的旋转方向,能够考虑密砂的复杂试验曲线特征,又由模型的热力学基础保证了屈服面和剪胀函数的协调。这种方法确定的模型结构严密,适应性强,可以描述大范围土体的特性,且简单易于使用。     

Incrementalization of a single hardening constitutive model for frictional materials

The governing equations for an elasto‐plastic constitutive model for frictional materials such as soil, rock, and concrete are presented, and the incremental form is indicated in preparation for implementation of the model in a user‐defined module for finite element calculations. This isotropic, work‐hardening and ‐softening model employs a single yield surface, it incorporates non‐associated plastic flow, and its capability of capturing the behaviour of different types of frictional materials under various three‐dimensional conditions has been demonstrated by comparison with measured behaviour, as presented in the literature. The incrementalization procedure is indicated and the resulting equations for the single hardening model are presented together with parameters for a dense sand. Following the implementation of the model, these parameters are used for evaluation of different integration schemes as presented in a companion paper by Jakobsen and Lade (Int. J. Numer. Anal. Meth. Geomech. 2002; 26 :661). Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stress–dilatancy based modelling of granular materials and extensions to soils with crushable grains

Stress–dilatancy relations have played a crucial role in the understanding of the mechanical behaviour of soils and in the development of realistic constitutive models for their response. Recent investigations on the mechanical behaviour of materials with crushable grains have called into question the validity of classical relations such as those used in critical state soil mechanics. In this paper, a method to construct thermodynamically consistent (isotropic, three‐invariant) elasto‐plastic models based on a given stress–dilatancy relation is discussed. Extensions to cover the case of granular materials with crushable grains are also presented, based on the interpretation of some classical model parameters (e.g. the stress ratio at critical state) as internal variables that evolve according to suitable hardening laws. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

一个基于热力学的土体本构模型

修正剑桥模型假设体积塑性功的一半转化为耗散能,一半转化为由塑性变形约束的自由能,但通常体积耗散能和塑性体积自由能并不相等。基于热力学理论,通过引进间隔应力比来表征体积塑性功和塑性体积自由能的比例关系,构建了一个土的体积硬化模型。由于岩土材料耗散函数与所处的应力状态有关,因此,需要应用非关联流动法则,修正剑桥模型是适合应用相关联流动法则的一个特例,也是所提出模型的一个特例。     

The influence of the plastic potential on plane strain failure

The influence of the shape of the plastic potential in the deviatoric plane on plane strain collapse is investigated. The most commonly employed elastic‐perfect plastic models are considered, which adopt well‐known failure criteria for defining the yield and plastic potential surfaces, namely the von Mises, the Drucker–Prager, the Tresca, the Mohr–Coulomb and the Matsuoka–Nakai criteria. Finally, the conclusions are also extended to strain hardening/softening models. For simple constitutive models based on perfect plasticity, it is shown that the value of the Lode's angle at plastic collapse in plane strain conditions strongly depends on the specific failure surface adopted for reproducing the plastic potential surface. If the value of the Lode's angle at yield coincides with the failure value prescribed by the plastic potential, the stress–strain curves exhibit the typical perfect plastic behaviour with yield coinciding with failure, otherwise the stress changes after yield and the stress‐strain curves resemble those of strain hardening/softening models. The infinite strength which is in some situations exhibited by the Drucker–Prager model in plane strain condition is investigated and explained, and it is shown that this can also affect strain hardening/softening models. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Explicit stress integration of complex soil models

In this paper, two complex critical‐state models are implemented in a displacement finite element code. The two models are used for structured clays and sands, and are characterized by multiple yield surfaces, plastic yielding within the yield surface, and complex kinematic and isotropic hardening laws. The consistent tangent operators—which lead to a quadratic convergence when used in a fully implicit algorithm—are difficult to derive or may even not exist. The stress integration scheme used in this paper is based on the explicit Euler method with automatic substepping and error control. This scheme employs the classical elastoplastic stiffness matrix and requires only the first derivatives of the yield function and plastic potential. This explicit scheme is used to integrate the two complex critical‐state models—the sub/super‐loading surfaces model (SSLSM) and the kinematic hardening structure model (KHSM). Various boundary‐value problems are then analysed. The results for the two models are compared with each other, as well with those from standard Cam‐clay models. Accuracy and efficiency of the scheme used for the complex models are also investigated. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stress‐dependent hardening and failure surfaces of dry sand

During several triaxial compression experiments on plastic hardening, softening, and failure properties of dense sand specimens, it was found on various stress paths that the size of the failure surface was not constant. Instead, it changed depending on the current state of hydrostatic pressure. This finding is in contrast to the standard opinion consisting of the fact that the failure surface remains constant, once it has been reached during an experiment or in situ. In general, the behaviour of cohesionless granular‐material‐like sand is somehow characterised in between fluid and solid, where the solid behaviour results from the angle of internal friction and the confining pressure. Although the friction angle is an intrinsic material property, the confining pressure varies with the boundary conditions, thus defining different solid properties like plastic hardening, softening, and also failure. Based on our findings, it was the goal of the present contribution to introduce an improved setting for the plastic strain hardening and softening behaviour including the newly found yield properties at the limit state. For the identification of the material parameters, a complete triaxial experimental analysis of the tested sand is given. The overall elasto‐plasticity concept is validated by numerical computations of several laboratory foundation‐ and slope‐failure experiments. The performance of the proposed approach is compared with the standard concept of a constant failure surface, where the corresponding yield surfaces are understood as contours of equivalent plastic work or plastic strain. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pre-failure behaviour of reconstituted peats in triaxial compression

This paper discusses the results of an experimental programme designed to investigate the deviatoric behaviour of peats. The results are obtained from triaxial experiments carried out on reconstituted peat samples. The interpretation of the experimental results follows a hierarchical approach in an attempt to derive the ingredients that an elastic–plastic model for peats should contain, including the yield locus, the hardening mechanism and the flow rule. The results obtained from stress tests along different loading directions show that purely volumetric hardening is not adequate to describe the deviatoric response of peat and that a deviatoric strain-dependent component should be included. The plastic deformation mechanism also depends on the previous stress history experienced by the sample. Stress and strain path dependence of the interaction mechanisms between the peat matrix and the fibres is discussed as a possible physical reason for the observed behaviour. This work offers a relevant set of data and information to guide the rational development and the calibration of constitutive laws able to model the deviatoric behaviour of peats.

     

Kinematic hardening plasticity formulation of small strain behaviour of soils

An objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the small strain model developed by the authors can be incorporated into the conventional kinematic hardening plasticity framework to predict pre‐failure defor mations. The constitutive model described in this paper is constituted by three elliptical yield surfaces in triaxial stress space. Two inner surfaces are rotated ellipses of the same shape, representing the boundaries of the linear elastic and small strain regions, while the third surface is the modified Cam clay large‐scale yield surface. Within the linear elastic region, the soil behaviour is elastic with cross‐coupling between the shear and volumetric stress–strain components. Within the small strain region, the soil behaviour is elasto‐plastic, described by the kinematic hardening rule with an infinite number of loading surfaces defined by the incremental energy criterion. Within the large‐scale yield surface, the soil behaviour is elasto‐plastic, described by kinematic and isotropic hardening of the small strain region boundary. Since the yield surfaces have different shapes, the uniqueness of the plastic loading condition imposes a restriction on the ratio between their semi‐diameters. The model requires 12 parameters, which can be determined from a single consolidated undrained triaxial compression test. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A multi‐mechanism constitutive model for plastic adaption under cyclic loading

As is well known, granular soils under cyclic loading dissipate a large amount of energy and accumulate large irreversible strains. Usually, with time, this second effect reduces and the accumulation rate decreases with the number of cycles until obtaining a sort of ideal stationary cyclic state at which ratcheting disappears. In this paper, only this ideal state is taken into consideration and simulated by means of a multi‐mechanism constitutive model for plastic adaptation. For this purpose, the concept of cycle is discussed, many different categories of cyclic stress/strain paths are considered and some theoretical issues concerning both the flow and the strain‐hardening rules are tackled. Even though the paper focuses on soil behaviour, the conclusions can be extended to all materials exhibiting ratcheting due to volumetric behaviour.Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Implicit integration of a mixed isotropic–kinematic hardening plasticity model for structured clays

In recent years, a number of constitutive models have been proposed to describe mathematically the mechanical response of natural clays. Some of these models are characterized by complex formulations, often leading to non‐trivial problems in their numerical integration in finite elements codes. The paper describes a fully implicit stress‐point algorithm for the numerical integration of a single‐surface mixed isotropic–kinematic hardening plasticity model for structured clays. The formulation of the model stems from a compromise between its capability of reproducing the larger number of features characterizing the behaviour of structured clays and the possibility of developing a robust integration algorithm for its implementation in a finite elements code. The model is characterized by an ellipsoid‐shaped yield function, inside which a stress‐dependent reversible stiffness is accounted for by a non‐linear hyperelastic formulation. The isotropic part of the hardening law extends the standard Cam‐Clay one to include plastic strain‐driven softening due to bond degradation, while the kinematic hardening part controls the evolution of the position of the yield surface in the stress space. The proposed algorithm allows the consistent linearization of the constitutive equations guaranteeing the quadratic rate of asymptotic convergence in the global‐level Newton–Raphson iterative procedure. The accuracy and the convergence properties of the proposed algorithm are evaluated with reference to the numerical simulations of single element tests and the analysis of a typical geotechnical boundary value problem. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the volumetric deformation of reconstituted soils

This paper reviews the phenomenon of volumetric hardening, which is a common feature of the mechanical behaviour of many geo‐materials. Three different material idealizations have been proposed to describe this hardening, and the paper contains the corresponding mathematical formulation. These idealizations vary in their complexity and hence their ability to capture different aspects of real material behaviour. Any of the three postulates can be implemented into most constitutive models. As a demonstration of their capabilities, the postulates have been implemented into the well‐known modified Cam Clay model, and computations are made with the resulting new constitutive models. It is seen that the new models can successfully represent important features of soil behaviour such as plastic yielding associated with loading inside the current virgin yield surface, the loosening or densifying of granular soils caused by shearing, and the accumulation of both volumetric and distortional deformation caused by repeated drained loading over a large number of cycles. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An elastoplastic constitutive model for cyclic behaviour of sands

The constitutive model of sands is proposed to describe the characteristics of plastic behaviour for cyclic loadings. A non-associated flow rule is used and both yield function and plastic potential are generalized forms of the Modified Cam clay model. The hardening parameter is represented by the plastic work related to different portions of volumetric and deviatoric changes. The boundary surface is employed to describe the plastic strain within the yield surface. The directional independency of yield condition in triaxial compression and extension tests is extended to that in general stress states. Several drained and undrained cyclic tests are predicted and the comparison is made with experimental results. The proposed model is capable of representing the monotonic and cyclic behaviours of sands with reasonable accuracy. The simulation is performed for both included and excluded membrane penetration effects and it is suggested that the membrane penetration causes the significant influences on the results of undrained cyclic tests.     

A non‐coaxial critical state soil model and its application to simple shear simulations

The yield vertex non‐coaxial theory is implemented into a critical state soil model, CASM (Int. J. Numer. Anal. Meth. Geomech. 1998; 22 :621–653) to investigate the non‐coaxial influences on the stress–strain simulations of real soil behaviour in the presence of principal stress rotations. The CASM is a unified clay and sand model, developed based on the soil critical state concept and the state parameter concept. Without loss of simplicity, it is capable of simulating the behaviour of sands and clays within a wide range of densities. The non‐coaxial CASM is employed to simulate the simple shear responses of Erksak sand and Weald clay under different densities and initial stress states. Dependence of the soil behaviour on the Lode angle and different plastic flow rules in the deviatoric plane are also considered in the study of non‐coaxial influences. All the predictions indicate that the use of the non‐coaxial model makes the orientations of the principal stress and the principal strain rate different during the early stage of shearing, and they approach the same ultimate values with an increase in loading. These ultimate orientations are dependent on the density of soils, and independent of their initial stress states. The use of the non‐coaxial model also softens the shear stress evolutions, compared with the coaxial model. It is also found that the ultimate shear strengths by using the coaxial and non‐coaxial models are dependent on the plastic flow rules in the deviatoric plane. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A hierarchical approach for constitutive modelling of geologic materials

A hierarchical concept is proposed for the development of constitutive models to account for various factors that influence behaviour of (geologic) materials. It permits evolution of models of progressively higher grades from the basic model representing isotropic hardening with associative behaviour. Factors such as non-associativeness and induced anisotropy due to friction and cyclic loading, and softening are introduced as corrections or perturbations to the basic model. The influence of these factors is captured through non-associativeness manifested by deviation from normality of the plastic strain increments to the yield surface, F. Details of four models: isotropic hardening with associative behaviour, isotropic hardening with non-associative behavioural anisotropic hardening and strain-softening with a damage variable are presented. They are verified with respect to laboratory multiaxial test data under various paths of loading, unloading and reloading for typical soils, rock and concrete. The proposed concept is general, yet sufficiently simplified in terms of physical understanding, number of constants and their physical meanings, determination of the constants and implementation.     

Probabilistic yielding and cyclic behavior of geomaterials

In this paper, the novel concept of probabilistic yielding is used for 1‐D cyclic simulation of the constitutive behavior of geomaterials. Fokker–Planck–Kolmogorov equation‐based probabilistic elastic–plastic constitutive framework is applied for obtaining the complete probabilistic (probability density function) material response. Both perfectly plastic and hardening‐type material models are considered. It is shown that when uncertainties in material parameters are taken into consideration, even the simple, elastic‐perfectly plastic model captures some of the important features of geomaterial behavior, for example, modulus reduction with cyclic strain, which, deterministically, is only possible with more advanced constitutive models. Furthermore, it is also shown that the use of isotropic and kinematic hardening rules does not significantly improve the probabilistic material response. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

考虑颗粒破碎影响的粗粒土本构关系

粗粒土在较大的应力条件下容易产生颗粒破碎现象,而现有的大多数模型都没有考虑剪切过程中的颗粒破碎。模型将塑性功引入土体受力变形过程的能量方程中,推导得到土体流动法则。采用直线型屈服轨迹和非相关联流动法则,利用不排水应力路径计算得到硬化函数,建立了一个考虑颗粒破碎的粗粒土本构模型。对比分析表明：该模型对粗粒土在各种围压下的应力-应变和体应变计算结果与试验曲线吻合较好。     

Generalized strain probing of constitutive models

Advanced material constitutive models are used to describe complex soil behaviour. These models are often used in the solution of boundary value problems under general loading conditions. Users and developers of constitutive models need to methodically investigate the represented soil response under a wide range of loading conditions. This paper presents a systematic procedure for probing constitutive models. A general incremental strain probe, 6D hyperspherical strain probe (HSP), is introduced to examine rate‐independent model response under all possible strain loading conditions. Two special cases of HSP, the true triaxial strain probe (TTSP) and the plane‐strain strain probe (PSSP), are used to generate 3‐D objects that represent model stress response to probing. The TTSP, PSSP and general HSP procedures are demonstrated using elasto‐plastic models. The objects resulting from the probing procedure readily highlight important model characteristics including anisotropy, yielding, hardening, softening and failure. The PSSP procedure is applied to a Neural Network (NN) based constitutive model. It shows that this probing is especially useful in understanding NN constitutive models, which do not contain explicit functions for yield surface, hardening, or anisotropy. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.