A fully coupled constitutive model for thermo-hydro-mechanical behaviour of unsaturated soils

This work presents a fully coupled constitutive model for thermo-hydro-mechanical behaviour of unsaturated soils. This model, with 18 parameters, can consider the primary features of unsaturated soils, such as mechanical responses at various temperatures and matric suctions, drying/wetting behaviour (water retention curves and volumetric strain) at various temperatures and net stresses, and thermal volumetric behaviour at various matric suctions. A numerical example on a drained heating-drying-isotropic loading-wetting path is used to show the basic properties and performance of the proposed model. Finally, the proposed model is validated against experimental data for temperature/suction-controlled isotropic tests, temperature-controlled wetting-drying tests, suction-controlled heating-cooling tests and temperature/suction-controlled triaxial tests.

Automated summary

This work introduces a fully coupled constitutive model for the thermo-hydro-mechanical behavior of unsaturated soils, which considers key features of unsaturated soils and is validated against experimental data. The model is shown to exhibit basic properties and performance through a numerical example.