Generalized trapezoidal numerical integration of an advanced soil model

This paper investigates the numerical performance of the generalized trapezoidal integration rule by using an advanced soil model. The generalized trapezoidal integration rule can include many other integration algorithms by adjusting a single parameter α ranging from 1 to 0. The soil model used is the recently developed middle surface concept (MSC) sand model which simulates different soil response characteristics by using different pseudo‐yield functions. The generalized trapezoidal rule and MSC sand model are used to simulate the responses of sand samples with different relative densities under various initial and loading conditions. Instead of a single step, multiple loading steps bring the sample to the vicinity of failure. These comprehensive investigations examine and compare the influences of various values of α on the numerical solution of integrated constitutive equations, the convergence of Newton's iterative scheme, and the integration accuracy. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.