Modeling the Effect of Overconsolidation on Shear behavior of Cohesive Soils

A. Prashant & D. Penumadu

Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA

ABSTRACT: Using the framework of elasto-plasticity theory, authors have developed a constitutive model for shear behavior of normally consolidated to heavily overconsolidated clays based on the experimental data obtained from a series of flexible boundary undrained shear tests performed on isotropically consolidated cubical specimens of kaolin clay at various overconsolidation levels. This paper presents details of the constitutive model, which captures the overconsolidated clay behavior with reasonable accuracy. Overconsolidated clays exhibit non-linear shear stress-strain response even at low strain levels. Many existing models assume much bigger zone of linear-elasticity in the stress space compared to the acceptable range from the experimental observations of authors. In most cases, soil specimens fail before reaching the critical state, especially for overconsolidated clays. Strain localizations within the specimens could be a possible reason for premature failure, which leads to a sudden failure under monotonic loading. Various clays have exhibited significantly varying volumetric response under shear loading, which can also be influenced by the configuration of loading if the soil is anisotropic. These issues were considered while developing the proposed constitutive model. Yield surface is assumed to have a droplet shape in q-p stress space, and hardens with the evolution of plastic components of volumetric and shear deformations. A failure criterion is employed in the current formulation that grows in size as a function of pre-consolidation stress. A reference surface constraining the ultimate yielding of clay is assumed to be different from the failure surface to capture sudden failure response. 1 INRODUCTION A wide range of soils have shown highly non-linear stiffness at low strains; and in most cases soil specimen fail before reaching the critical state, especially for overconsolidated clays. Onset of localized deformations within the specimens could be a possible reason for premature failure. For various soils, the volumetric response under shear loading varies significantly, which can also be influenced by the configuration of loading if the soil is anisotropic. Using the well defined and widely accepted concept of elasto-plasticity theory, the authors have developed a constitutive model for isotropically consolidated clays that entertains some of the above mentioned issues. The model is designed to be formulated in two stages. In the first stage, the behavior of normally consolidated (NC) to highly overconsolidated (OC) clay is considered in a 2-D stress space i.e. the triaxial plane. The issues related to sudden failure, and nonlinear stress-strain relationships are addressed in this segment. In the second stage, the model is being extended to generalized stress space by considering the influence of stress anisotropy on the 3-D mechanical behavior of clay. The model developed in the first stage is the focus of current paper considering the effect of overconsolidation on shear behavior of cohesive soils. The basic concept of the proposed model is based on some of the assumptions about the clay behavior that were considered in the Modified Cam clay (MCC) elasto-plasticity (Roscoe and Burland, 1968). The volumetric response of clay under shear loading is defined using the consolidation properties of clay. The MCC plasticity uses volumetric hardening for growth of its yield surface, which is used in the current model as a part of the hardening rule. However, unlike the MCC plasticity, a non-associative flow rule (different yield and plastic potential functions) is used to describe the clay behavior as it has been widely acknowledged to be most appropriate for geomaterials (Lade, 1990). 2 FRAMEWORK OF THE PROPOSED MODEL The stress space in the following formulation has been defined using mean effective stress p, and deviatoric stress q. The corresponding volumetric and shear strains are defined using p and q.

2.1 Elastic Behavior The Cam clay elasticity (Schofield & Wroth 1968) is used to determine recoverable deformations. The incremental stress-strain relationship is described as
0 vp ' e p ' p (1 + ) e = q 0 q 3 (1-2 ) vp '

suggested by Lade (1990) based on plastic work contour calculations. In the current model, the yield function f is defined as

p ) f = ( q p ) L2 ln ( po
2

(2)

(1)

where v is specific volume (v = 1 + e, where e is void ratio). Elastic parameter is the slope of unload-reload curve (e-log p) during isotropic consolidation of clay, and is the Poissons ratio. 2.2 Yield Surface In an elasto-plastic model for clays, it is assumed that the stress state of NC clay lies on yield surface, i.e. their behavior is assumed to be elastic-plastic when they are subjected to further loading. The overconsolidated stress state remains inside the yield surface. Loading an OC clay takes the stress state towards initial yield surface producing elastic deformation. After reaching the yield surface, further loading generates elasto-plastic deformation and the stress state becomes normally consolidated. Based on the experimental results from a series of true triaxial undrained tests performed at various overconsolidation levels (Prashant & Penumadu, unpubl.), the yield surface in q-p space was determined to have a teardrop shape with its end point at p = 0. The shape of the yield surface was similar to the one
200 L=1 150 po'=300 kPa 100 50 0 0 100 200 300 400 Mean Effective Stress, p' (kPa) po'=200 kPa po'=100 kPa

Here, po is pre-consolidation pressure that represents consolidation history of clay, and L is another state variable. Both po and L together define the hardening behavior of clay. Figure 1 shows the growth of yield surface with changing hardening variables po and L. In Figure 1a, the yield surface is shown for three values of po = 100, 200, and 300 kPa, at a constant value of L = 1. The surfaces shown are self similar and their sizes have a linear relationship with po. In Fig. 1b, the yield surface is shown for three values of L = 0.4, 0.8, and 1.2, at a constant value of po = 300 kPa. Figure 1b shows that the yield surface grows only in the direction of shear stress with an increase in the state variable L. 2.3 Failure Surface and Reference Surface Mayne (1979), and Mayne & Swanson (1981) summarized the undrained strength behavior of different clays reported throughout the geotechnical literature. They showed that for most clays, the normalized strengths (Su/vo) are a function of OCR, which was originally identified by Ladd & Foott (1974). Based on this observation, Prashant & Penumadu (unpubl.) derived a function to represent the failure surface for NC to OC clays as shown in Equation 3.

p ) q = C p ( po
Deviatoric Stress, q (kPa) (a)

(3)

The parameter C corresponding to failure conditions is represented by Cf. The multiplier Cf and the exponent o are assumed to be soil constants. The failure surface is essentially a function of clays preconsolidation pressure po, which grows in size with increasing po value. Figure 2 shows the shape and size of a typical failure surface in comparison with that of a typical initial yield surface.

Deviatoric Stress, q (kPa)

po' = 300 kPa 150 100 50 0 0 100 200 300 L=1.2 L=0.8 L=0.4

(b)

Deviatoric Stress, q (kPa)

200

300

Cy = 0.8 Cf = 0.75 o = 0.7

Reference Surface

200

Failure Surface Yield Surface

100 po'=300 kPa L = 0.8 0 0 100 200 300 Mean Effective Stress, p' (kPa) 400

400

Mean Effective Stress, p' (kPa)

Figure 1. Growth of the yield surface in q-p space with respect to the, (a) consolidation history po, and (b) state variable L

Figure 2. Typical shapes of Yield, Failure, and Reference surfaces in q-p stress space.

During an experimental study, Prashant & Penumadu (2004) observed that when the cubical specimens of Kaolin clay were subjected to a variety of anisotropic stress paths, in most cases, the specimen experienced an abrupt loss of stiffness at failure and shoed a sudden failure due to localized deformations. However, the significance of the sudden failure response varied with different configurations of anisotropic stress paths. Figure 3 shows a typical example of smooth and sudden failure response of soil in stress-strain relationship. In this study, the use of all-around flexible boundaries during true-triaxial tests allowed the specimen to freely deform under various stress boundary conditions and helped identifying the onset of strain localization. The authors determined that sudden failure conditions (caused by strain localization) may be independent of the soil properties defining the pre-failure elasto-plastic yielding of clay. Therefore, the surface defining the ultimate growth of yield surface is separated form the failure surface. This surface is named as a reference surface. The failure surface defines lower bound of the reference surface, and these surfaces will be identical for smooth failure conditions. In triaxial compression plane, the reference surface can reasonably be assumed to have a similar shape as the failure surface. Therefore, Equation 3 can be used to define the reference by replacing the multiplier C with a new soil parameter Cy such that Cy Cf. For smooth failure conditions, Cy = Cf, which will reduces a parameter in the model. A typical reference surface in relation with the corresponding failure surface is shown in Figure 2. The growth of yield surface, by changing the state variable L, is controlled by the reference surface; however, the stress state can not exceed the defined failure surface. 2.4 Hardening Rule Plastic hardening (growth) of the yield surface is defined using two state variables, po and L. Similar to the MCC plasticity, the pre-consolidation pressure po is defined as a function of plastic volumetric strain, and is independent of shear strains. On the contrary, the state variable L is defined as a function of only the plastic shear strains. The expressions for the hardening rule are shown in Equations 4, 5.
po vpo , = p p ( )
L = 0, p p

Smooth Failure Sudden Failure

Figure 3. Smooth failure and Sudden failure conditions

Deviatoric Stress, q

Reference Surface qy Yield Surface

Mean Effective Stress, p'

Figure 4. Components of Stress State Mapping Function

defines the distance of current stress state, in relation with the reference surface, from hydrostatic stress p-axis at a constant p value. Equation 6 shows that is the ratio of current shear stress q to the value of shear stress calculated from reference function qy (Equation 4), at constant p.

= q qy

(6)

Figure 4 shows a graphical representation of the relationship between q and qy. The function ranges from 0, at p-axis, to 1, at reference surface. Therefore, the state variable L will have strongest relationship with plastic shear strains at p-axis; however, close to p-axis, developed shear strains are relatively small. The relationship goes weaker as the stress state moves towards reference surface; eventually, L becomes constant at reference surface. 2.5 Plastic Potential Plastic potential function is used to define the direction of strain increments at any stress state of material, which is usually achieved by taking derivatives of the plastic potential function with respect to the defined axes of stress space. In q-p space, derivatives of the assumed plastic potential function in current model are shown in Equation 7, 8.
p g = 2 1 p po g = ng q 1

po =0 qp

(4)

L = nL (1 ) qp

(5)

(7)

Here, is the slope of virgin consolidation curve (elog p) during isotropic loading, and nL is a soil constant. is a stress state mapping function (Dafalias & Herrman 1982, Whittle & Kavvadas 1994) that

(8)

Parameters and ng are assumed to be soil constants. Figure 5 shows the variation of plastic potential derivatives in stress space. Introducing into plastic potential function provides the flexibility of accounting for various clays having different volumetric response. A higher value of represents more dilative clay. Parameter ng describes the volumetric response as the stress state moves towards reference surface during incremental shear loading. The shear-strain increment vector remains zero when the stress state moves along hydrostatic axis; it grows to large magnitudes as the stress state goes close to reference surface; eventually, its hyperbolic variation becomes asymptotic to the reference surface. Therefore, if the material has smooth failure response (reference surface lies on corresponding failure surface), a limit of shear strain has to be specified as a failure condition. 2.6 Constitutive Equations During elasto-plastic deformation, the yield surface grows in size, by following the hardening rule, and the stress state always remains on the current yield surface. This condition can be satisfied using the following consistency condition.

dL =

L L p d p + p d qp = nL (1 ) d qp p p q

(11)

The flow rule can be defined as

p d p = d

g , p g q

(12)

d qp = d

(13)

Using Equations 9-13, the loading function d can be obtained as d = f 1 f dp + dq H p q (14)

where the material hardening H is f g vpo f g H = nL (1 ) + p L q ( ) po (15)

The derivatives of yield function with respect to L and po are shown in Equations 16, 17. p f = 2 Lp 2 ln o p L f p2 = L2 po po (16)

= f dp + f dq + f dp + f dL = 0 f o M p q po

(9)

Using Equations 4, 5, 9, the incremental hardening variables are derived as shown in Equations 10, 11.
= dpo po p vpo p p + o d p d qp = d p p p p q ( )
1 0.5 g/ p' = 0.8 0 -0.5 -1 0 0.5 p'/po'
Asymptotic ng = 1 ng = 2 0.5

(17)

(10)

Using Equations 7, 8, 16, 17, the H can be modified to as shown in Equation 18, and the incremental plastic strain can be calculated using Equation 19.
vL2 p2 p po 2 1 + H = 2nL ng L p ln p ( ) po
2

(18)

= 1.2 more dilative

f g 1 p p = H f g p q
e p e q

f g q p p ' f g q q q

(19)

3 MODEL VALIDATION A computer program is developed to get the model predictions for undrained shear tests. In this program, elastic and plastic strain increments are computed for a given effective stress increment vector of small magnitude, which is rotated in q-p plane to satisfy the undrained condition within specified limits; i.e. the cumulative total volumetric strain never exceeds the range of 0.0001%. The excess pore pressure value is computed as the difference between mean total stress and mean effective stress at

0 0 5 10 g/ q 15 20

Figure 5. Derivatives of Plastic Potential with respect to (a) mean effective stress p, and (b) deviatoric stress q

given stress state. The program predicts undrained shear behavior of a single element of clay, which has its initial stress state at hydrostatic stress axis, and it requires three initial state variables e, Lo and po. 3.1 Model Parameters The parameters and can be obtained from isotropic consolidation test. The o can be determined using Equation 20 as suggested by Mayne (1979). o = 1 (20)

200 160 120

q (kPa)

Predicted

200 160 120

u (kPa)

Measured

Predicted

Measured 80 OCR = 1 40 0 0 0.06 0.12 Shear Strain, q q (kPa) Measured 0.18 80 OCR = 1 40 0 0 0.06 0.12 Shear Strain, q u (kPa) Measured 0.18

200

120

Poissons ratio can be obtained by using its empirical relationship with Plasticity index suggested by Lade (1979). All other parameters can be determined using an undrained triaxial compression test on normally consolidated clay. The values of model parameters of Kaolin clay used for validation experiments are listed in Table 1. 3.2 Model Prediction for Kaolin Clay Undrained shear behavior of Kaolin clay has been predicted by using the parameters listed in Table 1, and by defining the initial values of state variables as Lo = 0.75, and po= 275 kPa. In Figure 6, the model predictions are compared with the corresponding experimental data obtained from a series of true triaxial undrained compression tests performed by the authors at various overconsolidation ratio values, OCR = 1, 1.5, 2, 5, and 10. Figure 6 shows that, at each OCR value, the predicted stressstrain relationship, shear strength, and pore pressure response has a close agreement with their experimentally observed values. Like the other elastoplasticity models, the proposed model shows a kink in the stress-strain relationship for OC clay when the stress state hits the initial yield surface. Sometimes, transitional plasticity concepts (Banerjee & Pan 1986) are used to eliminate this problem; however, that can complicate the formulation significantly. Considering a balance between simplicity of formulation and accuracy of results, it is found unnecessary to further modify the model.
Table 1. Model parameters for Kaolin Clay. __________________________________________ Model Parameters Symbol Value __________________________________________ Elastic Behavior 0.016 0.28 __________________________________________ Failure Surface Cf 0.63 0.9 o __________________________________________ Reference Surface Cy 0.66 __________________________________________ Hardening Parameters 0.16 nL 22 __________________________________________ Plastic Potential 0.92 n 3.5 g __________________________________________ * = 0.016, is determined from o and using Equation 20

160 80 120 Predicted 80 OCR = 1.5 40 0 0 0.06 0.12 Shear Strain, q q (kPa) Measured 160 120 80 40 0 0 0.06 0.12 Shear Strain, q q (kPa) Measured 0.18 Predicted OCR = 2 40 OCR = 2 Measured 0 0 0.06 0.12 Shear Strain, q u (kPa) 0.18 80 Predicted 0.18 0 0 0.06 0.12 Shear Strain, q u (kPa) 0.18 40 OCR = 1.5 Predicted

200

120

200 160

80

OCR = 5 40 Measured 0

120 Predicted 80 40 0 0 0.06 0.12 Shear Strain, q q (kPa) Measured 0.18 OCR = 5

Predicted -40 0 0.06 0.12 Shear Strain, q u (kPa) 0.18

160

80

120 40 Predicted 80 OCR = 10 40 Predicted 0 0 0.06 0.12 Shear Strain, q 0.18 -40 0 0 Measured

OCR = 10

0.06 0.12 Shear Strain, q

0.18

Figure 6. Model predictions and experimental data from true triaxial undrained compression tests (b=0) on cubical specimens of Kaolin clay with the initial stress conditions corresponding to overconsolidation ratio OCR = 1, 1.5, 2, 5, and 10.

4 LIMITATIONS OF THE PROPOSED MODEL In the proposed model, it is assumed that the loading is monotonic and that large stress reversals including sudden directional changes in the stress paths are not involved. The model is formulated for slow (pseudostatic) loading conditions i.e. the model is rate independent. Temperature and time effects are assumed to be absent. The present model considers isotropic elastoplasticity and assumes a circular failure surface in the deviatoric plane. However, the three dimensional experiments of authors on uniform and identical cohesive specimens indicate a significant effect of intermediate principal stress on the shape of failure surface in the deviatoric plane, which can be reasonably normalized using third invariant of stress tensor I3. In deviatoric plane, the yield and reference surfaces show a significantly different shape than that of the failure surface. Authors are refining the model presented in this paper to account for these important effects of anisotropy. 5 CONCLUSIONS A new constitutive model was proposed that can predict the behavior of normally consolidated to overconsolidated clays. Basic formulation of the model was expressed in the stress space using two stress invariants; mean effective stress p, and deviatoric stress q. The proposed rate independent model for hydrostatically consolidated clays was formulated to follow a non-associative flow rule. The shape of yield surface was defined on the basis of an acceptable range of elastic deformation that was determined from the experimental observations. The failure condition was derived from the widely recognized normalized undrained shear strength behavior of various overconsolidated clays. Elasticity was assumed to be isotropic. The plastic behavior was defined to be controlled by a reference surface, which might be different from the failure surface. A parameter was introduced in the model considering that the volumetric response of various clays under shear loading could be significantly different and even for the same clay, if it is anisotropic, various configurations of applied shear loading could produce significantly different volumetric response. The model parameters were determined using two standard types of laboratory tests, isotropic consolidation and undrained triaxial compression test on normally consolidated clay. Using the parameters determined for Kaolin clay, the model was validated by comparing the predicted and measured stress strain relationship and pore pressure behavior.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Financial support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) through grants CMS-9872618 and CMS-0296111 is gratefully acknowledged. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF. REFERENCES
Banerjee S. & Pan Y.W. (1986). Transitional Yielding Model for Clay. J. Geotech. Engrg., 112(2), 170-186 Dafalias, Y.F. & Herrmann, L.R. (1986). Bounding Surface Plasticity II: Application to Isotropic Cohesive Soils. J. Engrg. Mechanics, 112(12), 1263-1291. Lade, P.V. (1979). Stress-Strain Theory for Normally Consolidated Clay, 3rd Int. Conf. Numerical Methods Geomechanics, Aachen, 1325-1337. Lade, P.V. (1990). Single Hardening Model with Application to NC Clay. J. Geotech. Engrg., 116(3), 394-415. Mayne, P.W. (1979). Discussion of Normalized Deformation parameters for Kaolin By H. G. Poulos. Geotechnical Testing Journal, 2(2), pp. 118-121. Mayne, P.W. & Swanson, P.G. (1981). The Critical-State Pore Pressure Parameter from Consolidated-Undrained Shear Test. Laboratory Shear Strength of Soil, ASTM STP 740, ASTM, 410-430. Prashant, A. & Penumadu, D. (2004). Effect of Intermediate Principal Stress on Over-consolidated Kaolin Clay. J. Geotech. & Geoenv. Eng., 130(3), 284-292. Prashant, A. & Penumadu, D. Three-Dimensional Mechanical Behavior of Kaolin Clay. Soils and Foundations, Unpublished. Roscoe, K.H. & Burland. J.B. (1968). On the Generalized Stress-Strain Behavior of Wet Clay. Engineering Plasticity, (eds J. Heyman and F. A. Leckie), Cambridge University Press, 535609. Schofield, A.N. & Wroth, C.P. (1968). Critical State Soil Mechanics. Maidenhead, McGraw-Hill. Whittle, A.J. & Kavvadas, M.J. (1994). Formulation of MITE3 Constitutive Model for Overconsolidated Clays. J. Geotech. Engrg., 120(1), 173-198.

NOTATIONS
0, Cf Cy = Failure surface parameter in proposed model = Reference surface parameter in proposed model = Recoverable (elastic) strain = Permanent (plastic) strain = Plastic potential parameter in proposed model = Slope of unloading-reloading line [in v-log p plane] = Slope of virgin consolidation line [in v-log p plane] = State variable in proposed model = Hardening parameter in proposed model = Over-consolidation ratio = Mean effective stress = Pre-consolidation pressure = Deviatoric stress in invariant form, at failure = Specific volume, (1 + void ratio) = Principal stresses

L nL OCR p po q, qf v

e p , n g