Prediction of hysteretic behavior for unsaturated sands using the elasto-plastic constitutive relations

Abstract

This paper presents how the elasto-plastic constitutive relations have been used to predict the hysteretic behavior in unsaturated sands. An efficient method was selected to represent the relation, and the predicted capabilities were assessed on many scanning curves. The proposed method is derived from Gajo and Wood's evolution equation for the plastic modulus to evaluate the suction change during wetting/drying processes. The study proposes the simple formulas for the relationship between the boundary curves and the scanning curves. The results obtained from the proposed formulas were verified through a comparison with the existing experimental data in the literature. The comparison indicates that the elasto-plastic constitutive relations during cyclic loading can be utilized to describe the scanning behavior of Soil Water Characteristic Curves (SWCCs).

Incorporating hysteresis in one-dimensional seepage modeling in unsaturated soils

“…When the drying process reverses to a wetting process and vice versa, θ is no longer unique and hysteresis must be considered (Russo et al, 1989). Specifically, unsaturated soils undergoing a drying process tend to retain a larger amount of water than during a wetting process at the same suction (Likos and Lu, 2004;Min and Phan, 2010).…”