The PM4Silt plasticity model for representing low-plasticity silts and clays in geotechnical earthquake engineering applications is presented herein. The PM4Silt model builds on the framework of the stress-ratio controlled, critical state compatible, bounding surface plasticity PM4Sand model (version 3) described in Boulanger and Ziotopoulou (2015) and Ziotopoulou and Boulanger (2016). Modifications to the model were developed and implemented to improve its ability to approximate undrained monotonic and cyclic loading responses of low-plasticity silts and clays, as opposed to those for purely nonplastic silts or sands. Emphasis was given to obtaining reasonable approximations of undrained monotonic shear strengths, undrained cyclic shear strengths, and shear modulus reduction and hysteretic damping responses across a range of initial static shear stress and overburden stress conditions. The model does not include a cap, and therefore is not suited for simulating consolidation settlements or strength evolution with consolidation stress history. The model is cast in terms of the state parameter relative to a linear critical state line in void ratio versus logarithm of mean effective stress. The primary input parameters are the undrained shear strength ratio (or undrained shear strength), the shear modulus coefficient, the contraction rate parameter, and an optional post-strong-shaking shear strength reduction factor. All secondary input parameters are assigned default values based on a generalized calibration. Secondary parameters that are most likely to warrant adjustment based on site-specific laboratory test data include the shear modulus exponent, plastic modulus coefficient (adjusts modulus reduction with shear strain), bounding stress ratio parameters (affect peak friction angles and undrained stress paths), fabric related parameters (affect rate of shear strain accumulation at larger strains and shape of stress-strain hysteresis loops), maximum excess pore pressure ratio, initial void ratio, and compressibility index. The model is coded as a user defined material in a dynamic link library (DLL) for use with the commercial program FLAC 8.0 (Itasca 2016). The numerical implementation and DLL module are described. The behavior of the model is illustrated by simulations of element loading tests covering a range of conditions, including undrained monotonic and cyclic loading under a range of initial confining and shear stress conditions. The model is shown to provide reasonable approximations of behaviors important to many earthquake engineering applications and to be relatively easy to calibrate.
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Constitutive modeling of the cyclic loading response of low plasticity fine-grained soils
Calibrations of the PM4Silt constitutive model are presented for two low-plasticity fine-grained soils that exhibit significantly different cyclic loading be-haviors. The PM4Silt model is a stress-ratio controlled, critical state compatible, bounding surface plasticity model that was recently developed for representing low-plasticity silts and clays in geotechnical earthquake engineering applications. The low-plasticity clayey silt and silty clay examined herein were reconstituted mixtures of silica silt and kaolin with plasticity indices (PIs) of 6 and 20. Un-drained monotonic and undrained cyclic direct simple shear (DSS) tests were per-formed on normally consolidated, slurry deposited specimens. Calibration of the PM4Silt model was based on the monotonic and cyclic DSS test data, plus em-pirical relationships for strain-dependent secant shear moduli and equivalent damping ratios. The calibration process and performance of the PM4Silt constitu-tive model are described for each soil. The results illustrate that PM4Silt is capa-ble of reasonably approximating a range of monotonic and cyclic loading behav-iors important to many earthquake engineering applications and is relatively easy to calibrate.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1635398
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10079717
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- GSIC 2018, Proceedings of GeoShanghai 2018 International Conference: Fundamentals of Soil Behaviours, A. Zhou et al. (Eds.), Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 25-44
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0125-4_1
