An anisotropic Model for Structured Soils: Part I: Theory

The paper presents an incremental plasticity constitutive Model for Structured Soils (MSS–2) to describe the effects of structure (stress history and bonding) on the mechanical behaviour of cohesive soils. Such effects are high initial stiffness, dilatancy and peak strength, their appreciable reduction upon strain-induced de-structuring and the evolution of material anisotropy. The proposed model advances present practice in incremental elasto-plasticity for structured soils by incorporating: (a) distorted ellipsoids, rotated with respect to the isotropic axis, for the Structure Strength Envelope (bounding surface) and the Plastic Yield Envelope (yield surface) to describe the evolution of structure and anisotropy, (b) an Intrinsic Compressibility Framework and a corresponding Intrinsic Strength Envelope which represents a lower bound of the Structure Strength Envelope and is used as reference locus for the structureless material, (c) an improved damage mechanism to model structure degradation by plastic strains and (d) a non-associated flow rule controlled by structure. The proposed model is modular, its features can be activated simultaneously or selectively, and the 3-D tensorial formulation facilitates direct implementation in finite elements codes.