Simulation of Cyclic Soil Behavior using PM4Sand, a Kinematic Hardening Plasticity Model

In this paper we investigate the PM4Sand plasticity model developed by Boulanger and Ziotopoulou in predicting soil behavior under cyclic loading. PM4Sand is a constitutive model based on Critical State Soil Mechanics. It uses a 2-surface kinematic yield surface in modeling soil behavior and more importantly considers the effect of fabric change and void ratio evolution during loading. In this study, we implemented the model in a MATLAB script and further calibrated it with test data in the literature. We simulated the results from earlier experimental studies on Monterey River, Fraser River and Oosterschelde sands at different relative densities and under different confining pressures. Simulated and measured values of number of cycles to liquefaction triggering were compared. The results have shown that, PM4Sand can predict the number of cycles to liquefaction with considerable accuracy for a variety of cyclic load levels for these sands at different relative densities under a wide range of confining pressures.