Stress-Dependency of Intergranular Strain

A.B. Tsegaye1, B.W. Ygzaw, and Thomas Benz1

1
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

Abstract. Various experimental results show that small strain stiffness and its de-
cay with shear strain depend on confining pressure amongst other factors. In this
paper, a selection of experimental evidence is briefly discussed. The Intergranular
Strain formulation by Niemunis & Herle (1997) for the hypoplastic theory is ex-
tended for the same effect and evaluated. Furthermore, application of the concept
to elastoplastic models is discussed.

1 Introduction
Generally, stiffness of soils depends on stress (e.g., Ohde 1939, Janbu 1963). It
has also been noticed that stiffness of soils at small strains is tress dependent
(Hardin & Richart 1963).
The trend of the normalized shear modulus is often taken as a characteristic
curve of secant (sometimes also tangent) shear modulus reduction with shear
strain. Generally, the rate of decay of the normalized shear modulus of soils with
shear strain may be affected by several state variables. In literature, the influence
of various variables has been investigated (see, e.g., Vucetic & Dorby 1991, Lan-
sivaara 1999, and Benz 2007) which may be summarized as
G
= f (g , p, I p , e0 , OCR, grain characterstics, etc.) . (1)
Gmax

where Gmax is maximum shear modulus, g is shear strain, p is confining stress,

I p is plasticity index, e0 is initial void ratio, OCR is overconsolidation ratio to
mention some.
The normalized shear modulus decays with shear strain while the rate of decay
decreases with confining pressure, plasticity index (for plastic soils), void ratio,
and overconsolidation ratio, OCR (see e.g., Daredeli 2001, Vucetic & Dorby.
1991).
In this paper, the treatment is restricted only to effect of confining pressure p.
Some experimental evidence on the effect of confining pressure is briefly dis-
cussed in the next section. Then the Intergranular Strain concept proposed by
Niemunis & Herle (1997) for the hypoplastic theory is discussed and a simple way
of applying similar technique to elastoplastic theories is treated. Next the
evolution of the normalized shear modulus is extended for the effect of confining

Q. Yang et al. (Eds.): Constitutive Modeling of Geomaterials, SSGG, pp. 483–490.

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484 A.B. Tsegaye, B.W. Ygzaw, and T. Benz

pressure, which the original formulation does not consider. For illustration, the da-
ta presented in the following section (Figure 1) are numerically back calculated
using the extended Intergranular Strain model.

2 Experimental Evidence of Influence of Mean Normal Stress

on the Rate of Decay of Small Strain Stiffness
Various experimental studies show that the decay of normalized shear modulus in
the small strain region is influenced by confining pressure (e.g., Iwasaki et al.
1978, Kokusho 1980, Ni 1987, Darendeli et al. 2001, Stokeo et al. 2004).

1.2 1.2
G/Gmax[−]

G/Gmax[−]
0.8 0.8

25kPa 25kPa
0.4 50kPa 0.4 50kPa
100kPa 100kPa
200kPa 200kPa
0 0

0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1 0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1

γ [%] γ [%]
a. b.
1.2 1.2
G/Gmax[−]

0.8
G/Gmax[−]

0.8
20kPa
25kPa
50kPa
0.4 0.4 100kPa
100kPa
400kPa
200kPa
1600kPa
0 0

0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1 0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1

γ [%] γ [%]

c. d.

Fig. 1. Plots of normalized shear modulus with shear strain a) after Iwasaki et al. (1978), b)
after Kokusho (1980), c) after Ni (1987), d) after Darendeli (2001)