Interpretation of existing constitutive models for unsaturated soil and the general expression of the constitutive model considering hysteresis of the water retention characteristic curve

Abstract

There are some constitutive models for unsaturated soil. However, their mathematical structures, particularly for expression of collapse phenomenon, are essentially the same. Therefore, it is possible to unify the constitutive models which were proposed in the past. In this paper, a generalized constitutive model for unsaturated soils is presented. First, we outline existing constitutive models for unsaturated soil and, next, we propose a comprehensive constitutive model for unsaturated soils in terms of the effective stress for unsaturated soils. To this new elasto-plastic model, it is easier to introduce sophisticated methods such as a rotational hardening, a subloading surface and so forth. This model is formulated in the form of incremental general stress and strain relationship and is incorporated into a finite element code, DACSAR-U, for unsaturated soils. The performance of the new constitutive model is demonstrated by comparing with the models proposed by Karube et at and by Honda et al