'Investigating the cyclic behaviour of clays using a kinematic hardening soil model' by Dr Gaetano Elia (Newcastle University)

Summary

The stability of geotechnical structures under repeated loading depends largely on the induced cyclic shearing stresses. The design of these structures usually requires engineers to employ advanced soil models in their analyses. While a number of such models do exist, their validation against cyclic laboratory tests is still limited. In particular, the influence of the initial structure of clay and its subsequent degradation under cyclic loading appears to be insufficiently investigated from both experimental and constitutive modelling standpoint.
The work outlined in this presentation adds a new contribution to the theoretical understanding of the cyclic response of clayey materials, presenting the extensive validation of an advanced kinematic hardening model against laboratory data on a number of natural and compacted clays found in literature. The effects of overconsolidation ratio and structure degradation on the evolution of shear and hysteretic soil behaviour over a wide strain range, together with cyclic pore water pressure generation, are analysed in detail. The predictions of the model are found to be in good agreement with the experimental data, thus demonstrating its capabilities in capturing important features of clay response during cyclic loading, although further investigation is suggested.

Short biography

Gaetano Elia is a Lecturer in Geotechnical Engineering at the School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences of Newcastle University (UK) since 2009. He graduated in Civil Engineering at the Technical University of Bari (Italy) and gained a Ph.D. in Geotechnical Engineering from the same university in 2004. He conducts research in the area of soil mechanics, with specific insight in advanced soil constitutive modelling and numerical simulation of soil dynamics problems. He acts as reviewer for a number of international journals and for EPSRC-UK. He is currently a committee member of the Northern Geotechnical Group (NGG-ICE), committee member of the Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team (EEFIT), member of the Society for Earthquake and Civil Engineering Dynamics (SECED), the British Geotechnical Association (BGA) and the Italian Geotechnical Association (AGI). He also teaches geotechnics, geotechnical design, soil modelling and seismic resistant design to undergraduate and postgraduate students at Newcastle University.