Validation of seismic performance of an advanced sand constitutive model on experimental work on soil-structure interaction

Abstract

There is a growing number of available advanced soil constitutive models aimed at capturing soil cyclic behaviour and their subsequent use in seismic and offshore applications. Nevertheless, detailed validation studies of these soil constitutive models on benchmark experimental works on offshore or seismic soil-structure interaction are still rare. This work presents validation of seismic performance of an advanced elastoplastic sand constitutive model on a large boundary value problem of soil-structure interaction studied previously experimentally. The elastoplastic constitutive model is innovative in a way of using a hyperelastic law inside the yield surface. The finite element numerical results are compared with the experimental work on a group of piles analysed in a flexible soil container filled with dry sand and subjected to simplified seismic loading. In general, the comparisons show a satisfactory match between the results of the simulations and the experiments and confirm the suitability of the investigated soil constitutive model to carry out predictive seismic geotechnical analysis in the future.