Capturing strain localization in dense sands with random density

This paper presents a three-invariant constitutive framework suitable for the numerical analyses of localization instabilities in granular materials exhibiting unstructured random density. A recently proposed elastoplastic model for sands based on critical state plasticity is enhanced with the third stress invariant to capture the difference in the compressive and extensional yield strengths commonly observed in geomaterials undergoing plastic deformation. The new three-invariant constitutive model, similar to its two-invariant predecessor, is capable of accounting for meso-scale inhomogeneities as well as material and geometric nonlinearities. Details regarding the numerical implementation of the model into a fully nonlinear finite element framework are presented and a closed-form expression for the consistent tangent operator, whose spectral form is used in the strain localization analyses, is derived. An algorithm based on the spectral form of the so-called acoustic tensor is proposed to search for the necessary conditions for deformation bands to develop. The aforementioned framework is utilized in a series of boundary-value problems on dense sand specimens whose density fields are modelled as exponentially distributed unstructured random fields to account for the effect of inhomogeneities at the meso-scale and the intrinsic uncertainty associated with them. Copyright (c) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.