Three-dimensional generalization and verification of structured bounding surface model for natural clay

Abstract

As the proposed structured bounding surface model can only be used to solve planar strain problems of natural soft clay, a three-dimensional adaptive failure criterion is adopted to improve the model to capture the three-dimensional behaviors of natural soft clay. The three-dimensional adaptive failure criterion incorporated in this model can cover the Lade-Duncan criterion and the Matsuoka-Nakai criterion as its special ones. The structured bounding surface model is generalized into three-dimensional stress space by using the three-dimensional adaptive failure criterion. After improved with the three-dimensional adaptive failure criterion, the model can be seen as a modified bounding surface model which considers the destructuration and three-dimensional behaviors and neglects the anisotropy of natural soft clay. The simulations of undrained compression and extension tests of K0 consolidation state Bothkennar clay shows the unimportance of neglecting anisotropy in this model. It was validated on Pisa clay that the improved model can simulate well the three dimensional behaviors of natural soft clay under true triaxial conditions.