Effect of Fabric Anisotropy on Bifurcation and Shear Band Evolution in Granular Geomaterials

Strain localization, usually manifesting as shear bands, is frequently observed in geomaterials and is of the essential reason inducing the failure of geostructures. Anisotropic characteristics of soils has an important effect on the shear band behavior. This paper is devoted to study the effect of the fabric anisotropy on the initiation and evolution of the shear bands. In particular, the anisotropy is introduced to the strength parameter of the yield criterion by incorporating the material principal direction and the joint invariant of the stress tensor and the microstructure tensor. Furtherly, an elasto-plastic constitutive model considering the fabric anisotropy is established in the micropolar theory framework, and is then applied to simulate the shear bands in transversely geomaterials via three numerical examples, including the plane strain compression test, slope stability and the shallow foundation problems. Moreover, the mesh independency of the proposed model is discussed. Results show that the bifurcation, the shear bands pattern, and the bearing capacity highly depend on the material principal orientation and the anisotropic degree. Comparison with existing study indicates that the proposed model has a good performance in simulating the typical pre and post strain localization behaviors of transversely isotropic geomaterials.