Pressure-Dependent Elasticity and Energy Conservation in Elastoplastic Models for Soils

Abstract

This paper presents a study on the consequences of combining energy conservative or non-conservative elasticity within a plasticity framework. Toward this end, a versatile energy potential function is first presented and examined. It is shown to cover a wide range of existing empirical relations for pressure-dependent stiffness of soils. Utilization of these functions within hyperplastic constitutive framework allows for the resulting models to satisfy the Law of Energy Conservation for both elastic and plastic components of soil behavior. Apart from the theoretical rigor, a very important result of this approach is that it automatically implies stress-induced cross-anisotropy of the elastic component of soil behavior and dilatancy term occurs due to shear modulus dependency on pressure. Proper modeling of these phenomena, normally neglected by conventional hypoelastic-plastic models, has been shown to have a significant effect on the accuracy of the model predictions of undrained behavior of overconsolidated clays both in laboratory tests and in tunnel excavation problem.