A NUMERICAL MODEL FOR PARTIALLY SATURATED SOILS

摘要

The present paper deals with a numerical model for partially saturated soils. The soil is treated as a three-phase material, consisting of the deformable soil skeleton and the fluid phases water and air. Hence, the numerical model allows describing both the fluid flow in the soil and the deformations of the soil. The constitutive model is formulated within the framework of plasticity theory in terms of two stress state variables, consisting of the Bishop stress tensor and matric suction. The capability of the numerical model is demonstrated by the numerical simulation of a series of suction controlled tests and by the coupled solid-fluid numerical simulation of the water flow through an earth dam.