An improved hypoplastic constitutive model of rockfill considering effect of stress path

Abstract

An incrementally nonlinear hypoplastic constitutive model was introduced, which was developed without recourse to the concepts in elastoplasticity theory such as yield surface, plastic potential and the decomposition of the deformation into elastic and plastic parts. Triaxial drained tests on rockfill were conducted on a large scale triaxial apparatus under two types of stress paths, which were the stress paths of constant stress ratio and the complex stress paths with transitional features. Motivated by the effect of stress path, the Gudehus-Bauer hypoplastic model was improved by considering the parameter variations with different ratios of stress increment. Fitting parameter α presents a piecewise linear relationship with cosine of the slope angle θ determined by instantaneous stress path. The improved hypoplastic model can present peak stress increasing and volumetric strain changing from dilatancy to contractancy with the increase of transitional confining pressure σ_3t and the decrease of slope angle θ of stress path. Compared with the test data, it is shown that the model is capable of fully considering the effect of stress path on rockfill.

Keywords

hypoplasticity / constitutive model / stress path / triaxial drained test / rockfill

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