An experimental study on stress-strain behavior and constitutive model of hardfill material

Hardfill is a new type of artificially cemented material for dam construction works, with a wide application prospect. Its mechanical behavior lies between concrete and rockfill materials. A series of large-scale triaxial tests are performed on hardfill specimens at different ages, and the stress-strain behavior of hardfill is further discussed. The strength and stress-strain relationship of hardfill materials show both frictional mechanism and cohesive mechanism. An age-related constitutive model of hardfill is developed, which is a parallel model consisting of two components, rockfill component and cementation component. Moreover, a comparison is made between the simulated and the experimental results, which shows that the parallel model can reflect the mechanical characteristics of both rockfill-like nonlinearity and concrete-like age relativity. In addition, a simplified method for the determination of parameters is proposed.