A coupled hydromechanical bounding surface model predicting the hysteretic behaviour of unsaturated soils

Abstract

This paper presents a bounding surface model to predict the hydromechanical behaviour of unsaturated soils under isotropic stress states. The model combines the hydraulic law of Gallipoli et al. [8] with the mechanical law of Gallipoli and Bruno [9]. The hydraulic law relates the degree of saturation to the single variable scaled suction, which accounts for the effect of both suction and void ratio on the water retention behaviour of soils. The hydraulic law is made up of two closed-form equations, one for drying paths and one for wetting paths. Similarly, the mechanical law relates the void ratio to the single variable scaled stress, which accounts for the effect of both stress state and degree of saturation on the deformation of soils. The mechanical law is made up of two closed-form equations, one for loading paths and one for unloading paths. The proposed hydromechanical model is expressed in a finite form and has therefore the advantage of not requiring any approximate numerical integration. The model has been validated against four sets of laboratory data showing a good ability to predict the coupled behaviour of unsaturated soils (e.g. collapse-compression upon wetting) by means of a relatively small number of material parameters.