A constitutive model for cemented clays capturing cementation degradation

•Effective confining pressure plays a dominant role in the behaviour of cemented clays.•Beneficial effect of cementation is diminished as the confining pressure increases.•Proposed model to simulate the behaviour of cemented clays with cementation degradation.•Proposed failure envelope to merge with that of un-treated clay as pressure increases.

Laboratory experiments show that the effect of cementation on clays gradually diminishes as the confining pressure increases (particularly at high confining pressures) due to the degradation of cementation bonds. The main aim of this paper is to propose a constitutive model for cemented clays, referred to as the Cemented Cam Clay model (CCC), to simulate the cementation degradation during loading. The failure envelope of the proposed model is formulated to describe the behaviour of the cemented clay at a low pressure range similar to over-consolidated soils, while it merges with the Critical State Line of reconstituted sample gradually as the confining pressure continues to increase. In order to examine the stress–strain behaviour of cemented clays, an energy dissipation equation is developed inspired by the Modified Cam Clay model. The characteristics of the proposed model, including a non-associated plastic potential function and elasto-plastic stress–strain relationship, are presented in light of the Critical State concept. Validity of the proposed constitutive model derived from the modified energy equation is evaluated against triaxial test results for cemented clays available in literature.