CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The mechanical behaviour of natural clays is significantly affected by their insitu or initial structure in the form of cementation or interparticle bonding. Thisbehaviour can differ substantially from the behaviour of reconstituted clays. Suctionas well as plastic volumetric strains drive isotropic hardening/softening as this isa simple way to account for the phenomenon of volumetric collapse upon wettingand the stiffening effect that suction has on the soil skeletal response. A modelthat combines unsaturated and structured behavior is presented and then used tosimulate stress strain behaviour observed for an unsaturated natural clay subjectedto isotropic load paths. A parametric analysis is performed to observe the influencesuction hardening has on mobilized strengths. It is also shown that the model canpredict the maximum of collapse of unsaturated soils.