POST-BIFURCATION RESPONSE OF SATURATED SOILS UNDER PLANE STRAIN CONDITIONS

One of the key issues encountered in the strain localization and progressive failure analyses of slopes and retaining structures is how to describe properly the post-bifurcation response of soils. It has been found that the soil response measured globally in biaxial and triaxial tests may not be a unique material property of soils. It is therefore imperative to understand the post-bifurcation behavior of soils and to correctly simulate this behavior within a suitable mathematic framework. In this paper, the mechanical behavior of saturated soils in the localized mode is estimated through a homogenization technique and the average mechanical properties of a medium are intercepted by a shear band. Numerical predictions of plane strain compression of drained loose sand, untrained loose, medium dense and dense sands are in good agreement with the available biaxial test results.