Explicit integration of bounding surface model for the analysis of earthquake soil liquefaction

Abstract

This paper presents a new plasticity model developed for the simulation of monotonic and cyclic loading of non-cohesive soils and its implementation to the commercial finite-difference code FLAC, using its User-Defined-Model (UDM) capability. The new model incorporates the framework of Critical State Soil Mechanics, while it relies upon bounding surface plasticity with a vanished elastic region to simulate the non-linear soil response. Stress integration of constitutive relations is performed using a recently proposed explicit scheme with automatic error control and substepping, which so far has been employed in the literature only for constitutive models aiming at monotonic loading. The overall accuracy of this scheme is evaluated at element level by simulating cyclic loading along complex stress paths and by using iso-error maps for paths involving change of the Lode angle. The performance of the new constitutive model and its stress integration scheme in complex boundary value problems involving earthquake-induced liquefaction is evaluated, in terms of accuracy and computational cost, via a number of parametric analyses inspired by the successful simulation of the VELACS centrifuge Model Test No. 2 studying the lateral spreading response of a liquefied sand layer. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.