Unified Description of the Mechanical Properties of Typical Marine Soil and Its Application

Abstract

This study employed a modified elastoplastic constitutive model that can systematically describe the monotonic and cyclic mechanical behaviors of typical marine soils combining the subloading, normal, and superloading yield surfaces, in the seismic response analysis of three-dimensional (3D) marine site. New evolution equations for stress-induced anisotropy development and the change in the overconsolidation of soils were proposed. This model can describe the unified behaviour of unsaturated soil and saturated soil using independent state variables and can uniquely describe the multiple mechanical properties of soils under general stress states, without changing the parameter values using the transform stress method. An effective stress-based, fully coupled, explicit finite element–finite difference method was established based on this model and three-phase field theory. A finite deformation analysis was presented by introducing the Green-Naghdi rate tensor. The simulation and analysis indicated that the proposed method was sufficient for simulating the seismic disaster process of 3D marine sites. The results suggested that the ground motion intensity would increase due to the local uneven complex topography and site effect and also provided the temporal and spatial distribution of landslide and collapse at the specific location of the marine site.