Anisotropic seabed soil failure description and three-dimensional simulation method

Abstract

In order to find out the underlying effect of anisotropy on the failure characteristics from the mesoscopic mechanism, using the concept of fabric tensor and assumption of mutual mapping between isotropic space and anisotropic space, a compound stress is proposed based on the combination of ordinary stress and fabric tensor. This compound stress can be used to describe the primary anisotropic properties effectively. For the difference in the effect of stress-induced anisotropy on shear strength of various geotechnical materials in the deviatoric plane, a generalized failure criterion is proposed. This failure criterion can effectively describe various criteria forms from Von-Mises criterion to SMP criterion within a relatively large range. The hydrostatic pressure effect can also be indicated by the shape of the power function on the meridional plane. A primary anisotropy generalized failure criterion can be obtained when the compound stress is used to describe the new generalized failure criterion and the corresponding transformation stress method has been proposed. This method can consider the effect of native induced anisotropy and stress induced anisotropy on the shear strength simultaneously. The comparison between predicted and tested results shows that the proposed anisotropic generalized stress failure criterion and its transformation method can be applied to the geotechnical engineering practice simply, its rationality and applicability have also been verified.