An anisotropic bounding surface model for structured soft clay under cyclic loading

On the basis of a plastic bounding surface model, an anisotropic elasto-plastic model for saturated structured soft clay under cyclic loading is proposed. The effect of damage on structure caused by accumulated plastic strain is modeled with inner variable introduced into the corresponding equations, linking the structure damage with accumulated plastic strain increments. An anisotropic tensor and the rotational hardening law are introduced to reflect the evolution of anisotropy. Besides, by adopting the method of mobile mapping origin, the mapping rule is modified to simulate the elasto-plastic property of soils under cyclic loading. The validity of the model is verified by the cyclic test data of typical structured clay and Shanghai clay.