Bifurcation analysis of over-consolidated clays in different stress paths and drainage conditions

A three-dimensional elastoplastic constitutive model, also known as a UH model (Yao <I>et al</I>. 2009), was developed to describe the stress-strain relationship for normally consolidated and overconsolidated soils. In this paper, an acoustic tensor and discriminator of bifurcation for the UH model are derived for the strain localization of saturated clays under undrained and fully and partially drained conditions. Analytical analysis is performed to illustrate the points of bifurcation for the UH model with different three-dimensional stress paths. Numerical analyses of cubic specimens for the bifurcation of saturated clays under undrained and fully and partially drained conditions are conducted using ABAQUS with the UH model. Analytical and numerical analyses show the similar bifurcation behaviour of overconsolidated clays in three-dimensional stress states and various drainage conditions. The results of analytical and numerical analyses show that (1) the occurrence of bifurcation is dependent on the stress path and drainage condition; and (2) bifurcation can appear in either a strain-hardening or strain-softening regime.