ON IINTEGRATION OF CONSTITUTIVE EQUATIONS FOR SOILS

Majid T. Manzari and Rung Prachathananukit Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The George Washington University T-635 Phillips Hall, Academic Center, 801 22nd Street, N. W. Washington, DC 20052. Manzari@seas.gwu.edu and rungpra@seas.gwu.edu

Summary Explicit and implicit time-stepping integrators are developed for a recently proposed constitutive model for sandy soils. The model is a representative of a widely used class of cyclic plasticity models for soils and includes both isotropic and nonlinear kinematic hardening. The implicit algorithm is based on an Euler backward difference scheme and the explicit algorithm is based on a cutting-plane integration procedure. The performances of the proposed algorithms are examined through a series of numerical simulations of triaxial and bi-axial compression tests. It is confirmed that the implicit integration algorithm remains stable and accurate even in very large strain increments. It is also shown that while the cutting plane algorithm provides similar accuracy for small to medium size strain increments, it fails to converge at relatively large strain increments for which the implicit integrator provides accurate and stable solutions.

Key Words: Constitutive Modeling, Cutting plane, Implicit Integration, Plasticity, Soil, Two-Surface Plasticity, Cutting Plane.

1. Introduction Development of plasticity models that accurately simulate the constitutive behavior of engineering materials has been of great interest to engineers in recent years. In the case of geo-materials such as granular soils, the mathematical formulation of appropriate plasticity models is rather complex. Moreover, to be useful in engineering calculations these complex models require efficient and robust numerical implementation. The corner stone of the numerical implementation of constitutive models is the numerical integration of the rate equations. Normally a robust implementation requires an implicit integration that, in the case of a realistic constitutive model for soils, can be fairly lengthy and complex. The main reason for such complexity is that a soil plasticity model may include many different techniques of constitutive modeling. A realistic soil plasticity model often includes isotropic and kinematic hardening as well as the two- or multi-surface formulation for modeling the evolution of plastic modulus in cyclic loading response. Moreover the elastic shear and bulk modulus of the soil are pressure dependent and lode angle plays a role in the formulation of most soil models. Implicit integration schemes such as the closest point projection (CPP) method (Simo and Hughes, 1987) are often discussed in the context of classical plasticity models such as the J2 -plasticity model with nonlinear isotropic and kinematic hardening (e.g., Simo and

Taylor, 1986). Recently the application of the CPP method is further discussed in relation to some isotropic plasticity models for pressure-dependent materials (Aravas, 1987; Simo et al. 1988; Hofstetter et al., 1993; Macari et al. 1997). Here the performances of two different integration schemes (one implicit and one explicit) are discussed in relation to a critical state two-surface plasticity model for sands. The model includes a non-associative flow rule as well as a highly nonlinear hardening law and is particularly suitable to examine the performance of implicit and explicit integration schemes in the case of realistic soil models. 2. Outline of the model The constitutive model is a critical-state plasticity model for granular soils (Manzari and Dafalias, 1997) which is based on the following characteristics that are observed in the laboratory testing of sands. I) Like in any other type of soil, the strength and volume change behavior of granular soils is governed by the combined effect of density (void ratio, e) and confining stress. In the case of granular soils, this combined effect is often represented by state parameter, = e-ec, where ec is the critical void ratio corresponding to the existing confining stress on the soil element. When sheared in monotonic loading, granular soil that is denser than critical will exhibit a peak strength and upon further shearing a softening regime will appear in the stress-strain relationship. Granular soils with a void ratio less than their critical void ratio show a prevalent contractive response upon shearing toward critical state.

II)

A schematic representation of the two-surface model in the -plane is shown in Figure 1. The formulation of the model is based on the general two-surface plasticity and the bounding surface plasticity theory (Dafalias and Popov, 1976; Dafalias and Herrmann, 1982 and 1986). The state parameter, , is used as the key ingredient to accurately model the effect of critical state for sands. The model is shown to accurately simulate many important characteristics of granular soils in monotonic drained and undrained shearing as well as cyclic loading (Manzari and Dafalias, 1997). 3. Assessment of the performance of an implicit integration algorithm Manzari and Prachathananukit (2000) have developed an implicit integration algorithm for the integration of the constitutive equations of the aforementioned two surface plasticity model. The performance of this implicit integration algorithm is evaluated by simulating the response of the model in several conventional triaxial and bi-axial tests. In all these simulations, the model parameters reported by Manzari and Dafalias (1997) for Nevada sand will be used. The tolerances, Tol1 and Tol2 , defined in the integration algorithm (Manzari and Prachathananukit, 2000) are set to 0.000001.

b b = - = b b d d = - = d d

r1 =

s1 p

n c d

b r n

Yield Surface

Bounding Surface Critical Surface

Dilatancy Surface

r = 2

s2 p b +

r = 3

s3 p

Figure 1. Schematic representation of the two surface model in -plane. The first set of simulations is related a drained triaxial test on a medium-dense sample of sand with an initial void ratio of 0.75 and an isotropic confining stress of 160 kPa. The sample is subjected to strain controlled conventional compressions test (2 = 3 = 160 kPa) and is loaded to a maximum axial strain of 0.1 (or 10%). Figure 2 shows the performance of the integration scheme with the strain increments ranging from 0.008 to 0.00025 (0.8% to 0.025%). In order to guarantee the progress of integration, subincrementation is used when the convergence is not achieved with a prescribed strain increment. As it can be seen from Fig.2, the sub-incrementation is necessary for larger strain increments in the neighborhood of peak strength. It should be noted that the initial size of the yield surface (2mp) is equal to 16 kPa in all these simulations. This size may increase up to about 35 kPa during the triaxial shearing. Therefore, considering an elastic modulus of about 80,000 kPa and Poissons ratio of 0.25, the yield strain increment is about 0.00014 which is about half of the lower limit of the range of imposed strain increments. The upper limit of the range of imposed strain increments is more than 60 times larger than the yield strain. Such a large strain increment may cause up to 33% error in the evaluated stress increment. However, the strain increments that are between 1 to 10 times the size of yield strain, resulted in less than 2% error. Similar simulations are shown in Fig. 3 for the same sample (a medium-dense sample with an initial void ratio of 0.75 and an isotropic confining stress of 160 kPa) sheared in plane strain bi-axial compression. As expected, larger shear strength (y - x ) is obtained because the soil sample in a plane strain case is under more confinement than the triaxial case. The strain increments varied from 0.005 to 0.00025 for a 10% (or 0.1) axial strain. Simulations show that all simulations are very close to each other, indicating the accuracy of the integration scheme in a relatively broad range of strain increments.

0.005
350 300

( y - x ), kPa

250 200 150 100 50 0 0 0.02 0.04 = 0.00025 = 0.001 = 0.004 = 0.006 = 0.008

Volumetric Strain, v

= 0.00025 = 0.001 = 0.004 = 0.006 = 0.008

-0.005 -0.01

-0.015 -0.02

-0.025

0.06
y

0.08

0.1

0.02

0.04

0.06

0.08

0.1

Figure 2. Model simulations in drained triaxial shearing with varying magnitude of strain increment, ein = 0.75, using the implicit (CPP) integration algorithm.

800 700 600

0.015 Volumetric Strain, v 0.01 0.005 0 = 0.00025 = 0.001 = 0.0025 = 0.005 0 0.02 0.04

( - ), kPa

500 400 300 200 100 0 0 0.02 0.04 = 0.00025 = 0.001 = 0.0025 = 0.005 0.06 0.08 0.1

-0.005 -0.01

0.06

0.08

0.1

Figure 3. Model simulations in drained bi-axial shearing with varying magnitude of strain increment, ein = 0.75, using the implicit (CPP) integration algorithm. Figure 4 shows the performance of the implicit integration scheme in simulation of undrained response of the same sand but at a looser condition than that considered in Figure 3. A void ratio of 0.81 with an initial isotropic stress condition (x =y =z =160 kPa) were used and numerical simulations were carried up to a 4% axial strain. Again, it is observed that with a strain increment of more than 10 times the yield strain (33 steps amounts to a strain increment about 10 times the yield strain) the numerical simulation is stable and provides reasonable accuracy. 4. Comparison of the performance of a cutting plane explicit algorithm with the CPP implicit algorithm In addition to the above implicit integration scheme, a cutting plane explicit algorithm was also developed and implemented by Manzari and Prachathananukit (2000). In order to compare the errors in estimated stress states using the implicit (Euler-backward difference) and explicit (cutting plane) methods, a series of conventional triaxial

compression simulations were conducted. The initial void ratios was 0.75. The errors, , in Figure 5 is calculated by using = 100 . ( * ):( * ) / ( *:* ) , where * is the exact solution and is the calculated stress tensor. The exact solution is obtained by
~

using small strain increments. Figure 5 shows that the errors associated with the two approaches are comparable for strain increments ( y ) up to 10 times the yield strain ( y-yield). However, the accuracy of the implicit method is clearly superior as the size of the strain increment increases. If the strain increment exceeds a certain limit (in this case, about 31 times the yield strain), the cutting plane algorithm will fail to converge and substepping should be used. This is while the implicit integration algorithm can provide converged solution up to 40 times the yield strain.

120 100 80 y- x, kPa 60 40 20 0 40

y- x, kPa

120

33 steps 80 steps 400 steps

100 80 60 40 20 0 33 steps 80 steps 400 steps 0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04

60

80

100 p'

120

140

160

180

Figure 4. Model simulations in undrained triaxial shearing with varying magnitude of strain increment, ein = 0.81, using the implicit (CPP) integration algorithm.

12 Error in Estimated Stress (%) 10 8 6 4 2 0 0 5 10 15 y / y-yield 20 25 30 Implicit-CPP Explicit-Cutting Plane

Figure 5. Comparison of the errors in conventional triaxial compression simulations with ein = 0.75, using the cutting-plane and implicit (CPP) integration methods.

5. Conclusion Two different integration schemes, on implicit and one explicit were developed for a critical state two-surface plasticity model for soils. Both algorithms were implemented and used in simulation of the stress-strain behavior of sandy soils in triaxial and bi-axial shearing. It is confirmed that the implicit integration algorithm remains stable and accurate even when very large strain increments are used. It is also shown that while the cutting plane algorithm provides similar accuracy for small to medium size strain increments, it fails to converge at relatively large strain increments for which the implicit integrator provides accurate and stable solutions. 6. References Aravas, N. (1987), On numerical integration of a class of pressure-dependent plasticity models. Int. J. Num. Meth. Eng., 24, 1995-1416. Daflaias, Y. F. and Popov, E. P. (1976). Plastic internal variable formalism of cyclic plasticity. J. Applied Mechanics, 98(4), 645-650. Dafalias, Y. F. and Herrmann, L. R. (1982), "Bounding surface formulation of soil plasticity." Chapter 10 in Pande, G. N. and Zienkiewicz, O. C. (eds.), Soil Mechanics - Cyclic and Transient Loads, Wiley, pp. 253-282. Dafalias, Y. F. & Herrmann, L. R. (1986), "Bounding surface plasticity II: application to isotropic cohesive soils." Journal of the Engineering Mechanics Division, ASCE, 112(12), 1263-1291. Hofstetter, G., Simo, J. C. and Taylor, R. L. (1993). A modified cap model: closest point solution algorithms. Computers and Structures, 46(2), 203-214. Macari, E. J., Weihe, S. and Arduino, P. (1997). Implicit integration of elastoplastic constitutive models for frictional materials with highly non-linear hardening functions. Mechanics of Cohesive-Frictional Materials, 2(1), 1-29. Manzari, M. T. and Dafalias, Y. F. (1997). "A critical state two-surface plasticity model for sands." Geotechnique, 47(2), 255-272. Manzari, M. T. and Prachathananukit (2000). Explicit vs. implicit integration for a critical s tate two-surface plasticity model for s and. In preparation. Simo, J. C. and Taylor, R. L. (1986). Return mapping algorithm for plane stress elastoplasticity. Int. J. Num. Meth. Eng., 22, 649-670. Simo, J. and Hughes, T. J. R. (1987). "General rate independent return algorithms for rate-independent plasticity." In: C. S. Desai, et al., eds., Constitutive Laws for Engineering Materials, Theory and Applications, 221-231. Elsevier Science Publishing Co., Inc. Simo, J. C., Ju, J. W. Pister, K. S., and Taylor, R. L. (1988). An assessment of cap model: consistent return algorithms and rate-dependent extension. J. Eng. Mech., ASCE, 114, 191-218.

Acknowledgement: This study was partially supported by a National Science Foundation grant to the George Washington University (CMS-9802287) with Dr. Clifford Astill as the cognizant program director. This support is gratefully acknowledged.