Simulation of yielding and stress–stain behavior of shanghai soft clay

In this paper, a simple bounding surface plasticity model is used to reproduce the yielding and stress–strain behavior of the structured soft clay found at Shanghai of China. A series of undrained triaxial tests and drained stress probe tests under isotropic and anisotropic consolidation modes were performed on undisturbed samples of Shanghai soft clay to study the yielding characteristics. The degradation of the clay structure is modeled with an internal variable that allows the size of the bounding surface to decay with accumulated plastic strain. An anisotropic tensor and rotational hardening law are introduced to reflect the initial anisotropy and the evolution of anisotropy. Combined with the isotropic hardening rule, the rotational hardening rule and the degradation law are incorporated into the bounding surface formulation with an associated flow rule. Validity of the model is verified by the undrained isotropic and anisotropic triaxial test and drained stress probe test results for Shanghai soft clay. The effects of stress anisotropy and loss of structure are well captured by the model.