Soil plasticity modeling

The objective is to select a soil constitutive model based on the established theories. As reviewed, the elasto-plastic Cap models may be a good choice. However, there is still some additional work that I need to do to settle on a particular Cap model that will be suitable for our simulations. The important issues include, but are not limited to

• postulating the shape of yield surfaces and their connections;
• mathematically determining the motion and behavior of these yield surfaces;
• exploring the implications of nonassociated flow rules; and
• properly characterizing the tensile behavior in a general three-dimensional case.