A constitutive model for unsaturated soils: thermomechanical and computational aspects

Abstract

This paper first presents a complete formulation of a constitutive model that deals with the irreversible behaviour of unsaturated soils under various loading and drying/wetting conditions. A standard form of incremental stress-strain relations is derived. The constitutive model is then cast into the thermodynamical theories and verified using the thermomechanical principles. It is shown that hydraulic hysteresis does not contribute to the plastic dissipation, though it contributes to the plastic work. All plastic work associated with a plastic increment of the degree of saturation is stored and can be recovered in a reversed plastic increment of saturation. The incremental constitutive equations are also reformulated for implementation in finite element codes where displacements and pore pressures are primary unknowns. Qualitative predictions of the constitutive model show that incorporating two suction related yield surfaces and non-associated flow rules into the Barcelona Basic Model opens a full range of possibilities in modelling unsaturated soil behaviour.