| Abstract: | The main purpose of the paper is to present a relatively simple, yet realistic, constitutive model for simulations of structured sensitive clays. The proposed constitutive model can simulate 1‐D and isotropic consolidation, and drained and undrained shear response of sensitive structured clay. The proposed sensitive bounding surface model is based on concepts from the modified Cam clay model 8 and bounding surface plasticity 27 , with the addition of a simple degradation law. The key material parameters are M, λ, κ, and ν from the modified Cam clay framework, h from the bounding surface framework to model a smoothed elasto‐plastic transition, and ωv, ωq, and Ssr to model softening associated with destructuration. The model has separate parameters to model destructuration caused by volumetric strain and deviatoric strain. The model is capable of modeling unusual behavior of strain softening during 1‐D compression (i.e., a reduction of effective stress as void ratio decreases). A good match between test results and the model simulation is demonstrated. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
