A Characteristic and a Precisely Constitutive Model for Undrained Clay

Abstract

Constitutive models for soils are usually adopted in numerical method to analyze the behavior of geotechnical structures. This study performs a series of consolidated-undrained triaxial tests to establish the stress-strain curve of clay. A constitutive model that considers continuous strain hardening-softening is proposed based on the results of triaxial tests. Triaxial test results reveal that undrained shear strength linearly increases with an increase in consolidated pressure , the normalized undrained shear strength is about 0.52 not only for this study but also for the other two cases around Taipei Basin. Due to undrained condition, an associated flow rule between plastic strain increment and stress tensor is adopted. As accumulative plastic strain or/and consolidated pressure change, the mobilized undrained shear strength also changes. All parameters needed for the proposed model can be expressed as a function of undrained shear strength Su, The mobilized undrained shear strength for the proposed model during strain hardening-softening can be in term of accumulative plastic strain. This model can calculate the stress-strain curves of clayed soils accurately.