An engineering theory of soil behaviour in unloading and reloading

Summary A constitutive law is proposed for describing the stress-strain characteristic of soils in unloading-reloading. The constitutive equations are valid piecewisely between subsequent, appropriately formulated, stress reversal loci. The stress-strain relationships are formulated in terms of generalized stress and strain differences referred to the last stress reversal point and connected through a variable compliance tensor. The shear compaction effect is modelled by a suitable formulation of the compliance tensor.Specialization to conventional triaxial condition is given. As well as fitting available experimental data in unloading-reloading of normally consolidated and overconsolidated clays, the proposed constitutive relation can model the dependence on OCR of the shape of the undrained effective stress paths, the phenomenon of cyclic mobility of clay in undrained compression and the unloading-reloading stress paths in the oedometer. The theory requires the identification of only three material constants in addition to those pertinent to the usual elastoplastic theory of soil with which it may be easily combined.

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Sommario Si propone una legge costitutiva per descrivere il legame sforzi-deformazioni dei terreni sottoposti a processi di scarico e ricarico. Le equazioni costitutive sono formulate a tratti e definite su un dominio limitato dai luoghi di inversione di carico. Nella formulazione della legge costituitiva verranno introdotte delle variabili generalizzate di sforzo riferite all'ultimo punto di inversione di carico. Queste variabili sono legate alle deformazioni, riferite anche esse allo stato relativo all'ultimo punto di inversione di carico, da un tensore di cedevolezza variabile. Un'adeguata formulazione di questo tensore permette di modellare l'efferio di densificazione sotto carico deviatorico ciclico.Questa legge costitutiva interpreta bene i risultati sperimentali su argille normalmente consolidate e sovraconsolidate. La teoria permette anche di descrivere la dipendenza del percorso degli sforzi efficaci in condizioni non drenate dal grado di sovraconsolidazione, la mobilità ciclica dell'argilla in condizioni non drenate e il percorso degli sforzi efficaci in un processo di scarico e ricarico in un edometro.Per identificare il modello sono necessari solo tre parametri oltre a quelli necessari per identificare il comportamento del terreno vergine.

     

Incremental boundary value problems in the presence of coupling of elastic and plastic deformations: A rock mechanics oriented theory

In some elastoplastic systems (typically rocklike media) the elastic properties are affected by plastic yielding. This “coupling” phenomenon is dealt with in this paper in the context of the incremental theory of plasticity with nonassociated (lacking normality) flow laws. Some extremum properties and uniqueness conditions are given for solution of the rate problem. Stability conditions are established. The results achieved are equally applicable to media with nonassociative flow rules without coupling, with or without worksoftening, and are believed to be novel in this more traditional area. The results are cast into algebraic formulations for finite element models, in view of their practical applications.     

A note on strain localization for a class of non-associative plasticity rules

Summary Explicit solutions for the formation of discontinuity bands are obtained, for a class of non-associative flow rules. Specialization to particular yield functions for pressure sensitive, dilatant or compactive materials is given.

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Bemerkungen zur Lokalisierung der Verformungen für eine Klasse von nicht assoziierten plastischen Fließgesetzen

Übersicht Es werden explizite Lösungen für die Bildung von Unstetigkeitsflächen bei einer Klasse von nicht assoziierten plastischen Fließgesetzen hergeleitet. Diese werden insbesondere für einige spezielle Fließgesetze diskutiert, die zur Beschreibung von druckempfindlichen, dilatierenden oder kontrahierenden Materialien geeignet sind.

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Presented at the workshop on Numerical Methods for Localization and Bifurcation of Granular Bodies, held at the Technical University of Gdansk (Poland), September 25–30, 1989     

Chemo-Mechanical Consolidation of Clays: Analytical Solutions for a Linearized One-Dimensional Problem

Consolidation (and swelling) of clayey soils caused by change in chemistry of pore fluid is addressed. Such phenomena are caused by changes in the concentration of various species in the solution and result primarily from a stress-independent deformation of individual clusters, and from a mechanical weakening or strengthening of the clay solid matrix in the presence of stress. Second, transport of chemicals that involves concentration gradients induces additional driving forces of osmotic consolidation due to semipermeable membrane nature of clay. In this paper an extension of Terzaghi's model of the mechanical consolidation to incorporate chemical loading of soil is proposed. A linearized model is used to solve analytically two one-dimensional problems of consolidation of a homogeneous layer simulating a landfill liner with drained or undrained boundaries. The numerical results show a strong dependence of distribution of pore pressure on the chemical load and chemically induced settlements of soil to be comparable to the mechanical ones.     

Transport Through a Clay Barrier with the Contaminant Concentration Dependent Permeability

Transport of contaminants through clays is characterized by a very low dispersivity, but depends on the sensitivity of its intrinsic permeability to the contaminant's concentration. An additional constitutive relationship for a variable intrinsic permeability is thus adopted leading to a coupled system of equations for diffusive–advective transport in multicomponent liquid. A one-dimensional transport problem is solved using finite difference and Newton–Raphson procedure for nonlinear algebraic equations. The results indicate that although diffusion contributes to an increase of transport with respect to pure advection, the flux ultimately depends on end boundary conditions for concentration which, if low, may actually slow down the evolution of concentration and thus of permeability. Indeed, the advective component of flux may still remain secondary if the end portion of the layer remains unaffected by high concentrations. With no constraints on concentration at the bottom (zero concentration gradient boundary condition) and high concentration applied at the top, a significant shortening of the breakthrough time occurs.     

Coupling of elastic and plastic deformations of bulk solids

Summary In such solids like rocks, soils, ceramics, grain en masse the plastic deformation strongly aects the current unloading modulus. The consequences of this effect referred to as the elastoplastic coupling both to the elastic and the plastic part of the constitutive law are examined. Particularly, it appears that such phenomenon induces a specific kind of the non-normality in the plastic flow law. The departure from the normality is studied in connection with the form of the elastic modulus variation basing on the notion of a coupling potential.

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Sommario Il modulo di scarico elastico di solidi come le rocce, i suoli, i materiali ceramici e granulari dipende dalla entità delle deformazioni plastiche. Le conseguenze di questo fenomeno, chiamato nel seguito accoppiamento elastoplastico, vengono esaminate sia in relazione alla parte elastica che alla parte plastica della legge costitutiva. In particolare si dimostra che l'accoppiamento elastoplastico determina la non-normalità della legge di scorrimento plastico. La deviazione della normalità legata alla variazione del modulo elastico è studiata per mezzo di un potenziale di accoppiamento derivato da quello elastico.