SANISAND-C*: Simple ANIsotropic constitutive model for SAND with Cementation

Abstract

Cemented sands exhibit superior mechanical properties compared to clean sands. Based on this evidence, ground improvement methods are increasingly employed to induce cementing reactions that can bind the solid particles of sands and other soils for the ultimate enhancement of their properties and behavior. Despite increasing ground improvement applications, constitutive models capable of capturing cementation effects on the mechanics of sands remain scarce. This article presents SANISAND-C*: a constitutive model developed in the framework of bounding surface and critical state plasticity to capture cementation effects on the mechanics of sands. In this paper, the mathematical formulation of this model is presented first. Then, a vast amount of experimental data available for different materials (i.e., types of sand), loading conditions (i.e., stress levels and paths), and cementation types (i.e., natural and artificial cementations) is used to validate the model. Based on the comparison between experimental and simulation results, this work finally discusses the capabilities and limitations of the proposed model, highlighting that it can realistically capture key properties of cemented sands: increased strength and stiffness, increased dilatancy, and bond destructuration upon loading.