Soil constitutive models and their application in geotechnical engineering: a review

Abstract

Various constitutive models have been developed for modeling the stress strain behavior of soils and apply such models in finite element modeling for application in geotechnical engineering and also for analysis of soil structure problems under different loading conditions. Simple as well as complex models have been formulated based upon the mechanical principle (hooks law of linear elasticity and columbs law of perfect plasticity).However soils are not entirely linearly elastic and perfectly plastic for the entire range of loading. In fact, actual behavior of soils is very complicated to understand and it shows range of behaviors under different conditions. Hence, different models have been proposed to describe its response. Moreover, no model can completely describe the complex behavior of soils. This paper presents brief introduction of various soil models and particularly the cam clay Model and also their application.