Evaluation of advanced constitutive modelling for cemented clayey soils: A case history

In this paper, the settlement analysis of the raft foundation of a sugar silo founded on a cemented clayey soil deposit is re-examined by using an advanced constitutive model for natural soils recently published in the literature. The model, combining a kinematic hardening framework with a bounding surface plasticity approach, appears to be an attractive compromise between relative analytical simplicity and ability to reproduce the main features of the mechanical behaviour of cemented soils. The model has been implemented in a finite difference code in order to analyse the boundary value problem; the available experimental data obtained during the geotechnical investigation of the site were used in order to calibrate the model. The numerical analyses showed that the adopted model was found to be successful in capturing the main features exhibited by the measured load-settlement curve of the sugar silo.