The performance of a hypoplastic constitutive model in predictions of centrifuge experiments under earthquake conditions

Abstract

The behaviour of water saturated, cohesionless soils under dynamic conditions is complex and difficult to capture numerically. In the presented work, a hypoplastic model has been applied for simulations of a saturated sandy soil under various seismic conditions and the results of the model have been compared with outputs of laboratory tests. For this purpose, three different centrifuge experiments with the same sand material, but with different boundary conditions and initial soil conditions, were recalculated using the finite element method coupling the deformation and flow behaviour. The simulations of all centrifuge experiments were performed with the same constitutive parameters. These were determined from laboratory results independent of the model tests. A very good agreement between the calculated results and the experiments shows that the hypoplastic constitutive model can realistically reproduce the soil behaviour under dynamic conditions. The prerequisite for a good prediction is a careful calibration of the model parameters, in particular taking into account the stress and strain dependence of the soil stiffness.