Unidirectional cyclic shearing of sands: Evaluation of three different constitutive models

Advanced nonlinear effective stress constitutive models are started to be frequently used in one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) site response analysis for assessment of porewater generation and liquefaction potential in soft soil deposits. The emphasis of this research is on the assessment of the implementation of this category of models at the element stage. Initially, the performance of a coupled porewater pressure (PWP) and constitutive models were evaluated employing a catalogue of 40 unidirectional cyclic simple shear tests with a variety of relative densities between 35% and 80% and effective vertical stresses between 40 and 80 kPa. The authors evaluated three coupled constitutive models (PDMY02, PM4SAND and PDMY03) using cyclic direct simple shear tests and for decide input parameters used in the model, procedures are recommended. The ability of the coupled model to capture dilation as strength is valuable because the studied models reasonably capture the cyclic performance noted in the experiments and should be utilized to conduct effective stress-based 1D and 2D site response analysis. Sandy soils may become softer and liquefy during earthquakes as a result of pore-water pressure (PWP) development, which may have an impact on seismic design and site response. The tested constitutive models are mathematically coupled with a cyclic strain-based PWP generation model and can capture small-strain stiffness and large-strain shear strength. Results show that there are minor discrepancies between measured and computed excess PWP ratios, indicating that the tested constitutive models provide reasonable estimations of PWP increase during cyclic shear (ru) and the banana shape is reproduced in a proper way indicating that dilation and shear- strain behavior is well captured by the models.