Unified Elastoplastic–Viscoplastic Bounding Surface Model of Geosynthetics and Its Applications to Geosynthetic Reinforced Soil-Retaining Wall Analysis

Abstract

The static and dynamic behaviors of reinforced soil structures are possibly subjected to the effects of creep or stress relaxation due to the time-dependent behavior of geosynthetic inclusions and backfill. To simulate the time-dependent monotonic and cyclic behavior of geosynthetics, an isothermal constitutive model is formulated within the framework of elastoplasticity–viscoplasticity. The concept of bounding surface plasticity is first utilized to formulate a time-independent cyclic model of geosynthetics. In order to capture the hardening stiffness of some polyester geosynthetics, an exponential bounding curve is used in simulating the primary loading. The time-independent version of the model was extended into an elastoplastic–viscoplastic model using overstress viscoplasticity with reference to available experimental data. The model was evaluated using creep, stress relaxation, monotonic, and cyclic loading test results obtained for different geosynthetics. It was then incorporated into a finite-element code and the static and dynamic behavior of a geosynthetic reinforced soil wall was analyzed. The analyzed results, with and without consideration to the time-dependent behavior of the reinforcements, were compared. It was demonstrated that although the end-of-construction behavior of the reinforced soil wall was less influenced by the time-dependent properties of geogrids, the long-term performance was considerably affected. The seismic response was also affected to some extent by the rate-dependent behavior of geogrids. The effects were more significant for short and/or large vertical spacing reinforcement layout.