Non linear elasto-plastic analysis of cylindrical cavity in rock mass using a Hoek-Brown criterion

This paper aims to present an elastic, perfectly plastic, constitutive model based on the Hoek-Brown failure criterion and with non-associative plasticity. The objective is to apply the model to the non-linear analysis of geotechnical problems like excavations in rock mass. The computational implementation was carried out with a computational program called ANLOG (Non-Linear Analysis of Geotechnical Problem) system based on a displacement formulation of the finite element method. Due to the non-linear nature of the constitutive model, the study adopts an incremental iterative Newton-Raphson procedure with automatic load increments to guarantee the global level equilibrium. In addition, to guarantee the consistency condition at the local level, the study adopts, for the stress integration, an explicit algorithm with automatic sub-increments of strain. To validate the computational implementation and applicability of the numerical model, the study uses theoretical results to compare with ones obtained with the numerical simulation of cylindrical cavity in rock mass.