An effective stress-based approach to modeling the hydro-mechanical behavior of unsaturated soils

Abstract

A constitutive model of unsaturated soils is developed by incorporating the concept of intergranular stress into the framework of the modified Cam-Clay model. Within this context, the degree of saturation is viewed as an internal state variable, so that the soil-water retention function appears naturally as an evolution equation for the volume fraction of water. The new model not only has a neat structure but also includes fewer material parameters compared to the other models. A new volumetric-hardening law is proposed by taking into account the effect of wetting-induced pore collapse. It is shown that the collapsing void ratio (the current void ratio minus the void ratio at full saturation under the same effective stress) is dominated by the degree of pore air saturation (one minus the degree of water saturation), and practically independent of intergranular pulling forces, highlighting the important effect of soil fabric on the wetting-induced pore collapse. The proposed model is applied to simulate different types of experiments on unsaturated soils subjected to various combined hydraulic and mechanical loadings, showing its capability and diversity in modeling the hydraulic and mechanical behavior of unsaturated soils.