Enhancement of a hypoplastic model for granular soil–structure interface behaviour

Modelling of interfaces in geotechnical engineering is an important issue. Interfaces between structural elements (e.g., anchors, piles, tunnel linings) and soils are widely used in geotechnical engineering. The objective of this article is to propose an enhanced hypoplastic interface model that incorporates the in-plane stresses at the interface. To this aim, we develop a general approach to convert the existing hypoplastic model with a predefined limit state surface for sands into an interface model. This is achieved by adopting reduced stress and stretching vectors and redefining tensorial operations which can be used in the existing continuum model with few modifications. The enhanced interface model and the previous model are compared under constant-load, stiffness and volume conditions. The comparison is followed by a verification of two the approaches for modelling the different surface roughness. Subsequently, a validation between available experimental data from the literature versus simulations is presented. The new enhanced model gives improved predictions by the incorporation of in-plane stresses into the model formulation.