Incremental elastoplastic FEM for simulating the deformation process of suction caissons subjected to cyclic loads in soft clays

•An incremental elastoplastic FEM for simulation of cyclic responses of suction caissons is developed.•Special finite element algorithm and program code are developed.•The deformation process of suction caissons subjected to cyclic loads is simulated.•Developed method can calculate the cyclic displacement time history of foundations in soft clays.•Developed method can determine the cyclic bearing capacity of foundations in soft clays.

This paper presents an incremental elastoplastic finite element method (FEM) to simulate the undrained deformation process of suction caisson foundations subjected to cyclic loads in soft clays. The method is developed by encoding the total-stress-based bounding surface model proposed by the authors in the ABAQUS software package. According to the model characteristics, elastoplastic stress states associated with the incremental strains of each iteration are determined using the sub-incremental explicit Euler algorithm, and the state parameters describing the cyclic accumulative rates of strains are updated by setting state variables during the calculations. The radial fallback method is also proposed to modify the stress states outside the bounding surface to the surface during determination of the elastoplastic stress states. The stress reversals of soil elements are judged by the angle between the incremental deviatoric stress and the exterior normal vector at the image stress point on the bounding surface to update the mapping centre and state variables during cyclic loading. To assess the general validity of the method, the reduced scale model tests and centrifuge tests of suction caissons subjected to cyclic loads are simulated using the method. Predictions are in relative good agreement with test results. Compared with the limit equilibrium and quasi-static methods, the method can not only determine the cyclic bearing capacity, but can also analyse the deformation process and the failure mechanisms of suction caisson under cyclic loads in soft clays.