Unified Anisotropic Elastoplastic Model for Sand
Publication: Journal of Engineering Mechanics
Volume 142, Issue 1
Abstract
This paper presents a unified approach to model the influence of fabric anisotropy and its evolution on both the elastic and plastic responses of sand. A physically based fabric tensor is employed to characterize the anisotropic internal structure of sand. It is incorporated into the nonlinear elastic stiffness tensor to describe anisotropic elasticity, and is further included explicitly in the yield function, the dilatancy relation, and the flow rule to characterize the anisotropic plastic sand response. The physical change of fabric with loading is described by a fabric evolution law driven by plastic strain, which influences both the elastic and the plastic sand behavior. The proposed model furnishes a comprehensive consideration of both anisotropic elasticity and anisotropic plasticity, particularly the nonlinear change of elastic stiffness with the evolution of fabric during the plastic deformation of sand. It offers a natural and rational way to capture the noncoaxial behavior in sand caused by anisotropy. It also facilitates easy determination of the initial anisotropy in sand based on simple laboratory tests and avoids the various arbitrary assumptions on its value made by many previous studies. The model predictions on sand behavior compare well with test data.
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Prof Xiang-Song Li for his comments on the study, as well as the constructive comments offered by the two anonymous reviewers. This work was supported by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (under grant No. 623211) and HKUST Postdoctoral Fellowship Matching Fund.
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Published In
Journal of Engineering Mechanics
Volume 142 • Issue 1 • January 2016
Copyright
© 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: May 27, 2014
Accepted: Apr 2, 2015
Published online: May 28, 2015
Discussion open until: Oct 28, 2015
Published in print: Jan 1, 2016
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