Generalised dynamical systems soil deformation model

Abstract

When sheared past failure, particles in a soil element move into the steady-state structure at random shear strains, behaving as a simple friction-based dynamical system that closely models test data for a wide range of soils, stress paths and drainage conditions. This paper reviews this dynamical systems approach and generalises it as follows: for any stress path, particles move at random shear strains into the final structure corresponding to the applied stresses; that is, the same friction-based dynamical system-based model of shear to failure applies to any stress path, not just to those that lead to failure. The model being general, it can be specialised for the particular case of one-dimensional consolidation – that is, shear along the K0 line. Such a specialisation reveals the commonly observed linear relationship between e and logσ v for one-dimensional consolidation and hence supports the generalisation.