Unified modeling behavior of rockfill materials along different loading stress paths

Abstract

Rockfill materials used for dam construction show obvious stress path dependency during construction process. The constitutive model for rockfill materials are mainly established based on conventional triaxial test. This brings some deviation to the numerical calculation for earth rockfill dam engineering, and it is necessary to develop a constitutive model considering stress paths effect. In the framework of generalized plasticity, plastic modulus can be expressed as the function of dilatancy equation and tangent modulus, hence the influence of stress paths on model can be transfer to the dilatancy equation and tangent modulus. This leads to a new method to describe stress-strain response of rockfill under various loading stress paths. Based on the analysis of large-scale triaxial experiments of rockfill materials with various stress paths, we proposed new dilatancy equation and tangent modulus to better describe stress paths effect and corresponding modified generalized plasticity model is established. Through the prediction and comparison of three groups of rockfill materials triaxial tests, the model established in this paper can simulate behaviors of rockfill materials under various stress paths, using only a set of parameters.

Keywords

• Rockfill materials
• Loading stress path
• Generalized plasticity
• Dilatancy equation
• Tangent modulus