An elastoplastic model with combined isotropic–kinematic hardening to predict the cyclic behavior of stiff clays

This paper presents a kinematic hardening model for describing some important features of natural stiff clays under cyclic loading conditions, such as closed hysteretic loops, smooth transition from the elastic behavior to the elastoplastic one and changes of the compression slope with loading/unloading loops. The model includes two yield surfaces, an inner surface and a bounding surface. A non-associated flow rule and a kinematic hardening law are proposed for the inner surface. The adopted hardening law enables the plastic modulus to vary smoothly when the kinematic yield surface approaches the bounding surface and ensures at the same time the non-intersection of the two yield surfaces. Furthermore, the first loading, unloading, and reloading stages are treated differently by applying distinct hardening parameters. The main feature of the model is that its constitutive equations can be simply formulated based on the consistency condition for the inner yield surface based on the proposed kinematic hardening law; thereby, this model can be easily implemented in a finite element code using a classic stress integration scheme as for the modified Cam Clay model. The simulation results on the Boom Clay, natural stiff clay, have revealed the relevance of the model: a good agreement has been obtained between simulations and the experimental results from the tests with different stress paths under cyclic loading conditions. In particular, the model can satisfactorily describe the complex case of oedometric conditions where the deviator stress is positive upon loading (compression) but can become negative upon unloading (extension).