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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Lluis Monforte Vila, Abdallah NajdiORCiD, Professor Mohamed Rouainia
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2025.Long linear geotechnical structures (embankments and cuttings) are critical components of strategic road and railway networks. Environmental actions (seasonal variations in water content) induce cyclical swelling and shrinkage in the soil. Over time, these cycles can result in cumulative, irreversible deformations, reducing the strength and stiffness of the soil, ultimately contributing to the degradation and potential failure of these geostructures. The intensity of seasonal water content cycles is anticipated to increase due to more frequent and extreme wet and dry events, accelerating the degradation of geostructures. To model these effects, advanced constitutive models for unsaturated soils that are able to reproduce the observed behavior are essential. This study introduces a new advanced constitutive model for the hydro-mechanical behavior of unsaturated soils, formulated within the framework of elasto-plasticity with internal variables. The model incorporates the influence of recent stress history using a kinematic hardening approach, enhanced with elements of bounding surface plasticity initially developed for saturated soils. This model is further extended to unsaturated conditions by introducing a loading collapse curve. It allows for the retention of stress history, predicts irrecoverable losses in stiffness and strength, and captures the hysteretic response under cyclic loading. The model is implemented in a constitutive driver using an implicit numerical scheme, and its predictive capability is demonstrated through numerical simulations of laboratory experiments involving a complex sequence of loading stages.
Author(s): Monforte L, Najdi A, Rouainia M
Publication type: Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstract)
Publication status: Published
Conference Name: 5th European Conference on Unsaturated Soils and Biotechnology applied to Geotechnical Engineering (EUNSAT2025 + BGE)
Year of Conference: 2025
Pages: 02008
Online publication date: 14/08/2025
Acceptance date: 02/04/2025
Date deposited: 09/09/2025
ISSN: 2267-1242
Publisher: EDP Sciences
URL: https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/202564202008
DOI: 10.1051/e3sconf/202564202008
Series Title: E3S Web of Conferences
