An elastic-plastic constitutive model for structural soil based on egg-shaped yield surface

An egg-shaped yield surface is adopted in this study to overcome the singularity of classic cap yield surface. A series of compression tests of different stress paths is conducted on man-made structural soil. An elastic-plastic constitutive model of egg-shaped yield surface is introduced based on experimental results, with associated flow rule and hardening parameter of plastic work. The proposed model is second-derivative continuous in stress space and is of great value in theory and practice. Numeralization of the model is implemented by finite element method programming. The results of the proposed model and Cambridge model are then compared. The results show that the proposed model has good performance in simulating structural clay hardening. The calculated displacements agree with the experimental results. © 2014 ejge.