Soil Uncertainty and Its Influence on Simulated G/Gmax and Damping Behavior

In this paper, recently developed probabilistic elastoplasticity was applied in simulating cyclic behavior of clay. A simple von Mises elastic–perfectly plastic material model was used for simulation. Probabilistic soil parameters, elastic shear modulus (Gmax) and undrained shear strength (su), needed for the simulation were obtained from correlations with the standard penetration test (SPT) N-value. It has been shown that the probabilistic approach to geo-material modeling captures some of the important aspects—the modulus reduction, material damping ratio, and modulus degradation—of cyclic behavior of clay reasonably well, even with the simple elastic–perfectly plastic material model.