Elasto-plastic modeling of soft soil considering degradation of stiffness

The stiffness has a large influence on the behavior of soils. Its value is affected by some of the soils properties, such as the over consolidated ratio(OCR), the effective normal stress, and the plasticity index etc. In this paper, the numerical modeling of soft soils was carried out using an improved elasto-plastic S-clay1 model accounting for degradation of stiffness. The relation between the stiffness and the shear strain was established based on a large number of experimental data. The effects of strain-dependent stiffness of normally consolidated soils and over consolidated soils on the stress-strain behavior were studied through a comparison of the simulations with the experimental results of undrained triaxial compression tests. The results show that the behaviors of soils can be well predicted with the improved constitutive model, particularly before the peak stress.