An evaluation of soft soil models based on trial embankments

H.P.Neher & M.Wehnert

Institute of Geotechnical Engineering, University of Stuttgart, Germany
P.G.Bonnier
PLAXIS B.V., Delft, The Netherlands

ABSTRACT: Two constitutive models are introduced briefly and used for back-analysis of two test embank-
ments in order to assess their performance. The Soft-Soil model based on the modified Cam-Clay model, is
employed as a reference model. The Soft-Soil-Creep model is an extension which includes time and strain
rate effects. It simply needs one additional input parameter compared to the Soft-Soil model. Therefore the
performance of these two models can be compared relatively easily. The first embankment considered is the
well-known Boston trial embankment. For this embankment, however, measurements of settlements and hor-
izontal displacements have not been continued long enough to include secondary compression. Consequently,
for the second 2D FE-analysis an embankment with a long period of secondary settlements has been considered.
This is an embankment from the Skå Edeby test site in Sweden.

1 INTRODUCTION mary compression, it is clear that creep plays an im-

In recent years more and more constructions like
buildings and embankments have been built on soft
soils. Under soft soils the authors consider almost
normally consolidated clays, clayey silts and peats.
The special feature of these materials is their high
compressibility. Considering the tangential oedome-
ter stiffness moduli at a reference vertical pressure of


 , Janbu (1985) reports for normally consol-
idated clays 
 
to   . For normally con-
solidated sands he determined values in the range of

 to   . Hence, in oedometer tests normally
consolidated clays behave ten times softer then nor-
mally consolidated sands.
Another feature of soft soils is the linear stress-
dependency of their oedometer stiffness. When plot-
ting a stress-stiffness curve one gets a line of the form

  
. That behaviour leads to the well-known
logarithmic compression law


¼  


 ¼
(1)
where compression is regarded positive both for
stresses as well as strains. These considerations are
valid for normal consolidated stress states and do not
include secondary compression.
 is as-
But all soils exhibit some creep. Hence primary
compression is always followed by a certain amount
of secondary compression. Assuming that the sec-
ondary compression is a small percentage of the pri-
portant part in problems involving large primary set-
tlements, i.e. soft soils. This is for instance the case
for the Boston and Skå Edeby trial embankment on
soft soils considered here.
The construction of those embankments and their
subsequent behaviour were simulated involving the
deformation and pore-pressure. Two constitutive laws
are used to show the effects of taking creep into ac-
count or not. One is the Soft-Soil model (SS-model),
which is based on the modified Cam-Clay model,
using the Mohr-Coulomb (MC) criterion to describe
failure. The other, the Soft-Soil-Creep model (SSC-
model), is an extension to account for creep.
2 MODEL BASICS
The above mentioned two constitutive models are
briefly introduced in this section. They are both im-
plemented in the FE-Code PLAXIS.
2.1 Soft-Soil model
The SS-model is based on the modified Cam-Clay
model. A logarithmic relationship between the volu-
metric strain  and the mean effective stress
sumed. Because of the usage of the volumetric strain
 instead of the void ratio, Eq. (2) involves the mod-
ified compression index 
instead of the index  as
used by Burland (1965). For virgin isotropic compres-

1
 )
sion it yields (n C
S
q in e
  ta te
l
M (n´
)

ine
¼  

  
ls
 (2) ca re l
iti 1 ilu

¼ Cr o m b fa
oul
hr-C
For isotropic unloading/reloading situations the elas- Mo
tic volume strain is formulated as
  p eq ppeq

 ¼  
  


(3) p´

¼ c´.cot j´

The parameter 
is the modified swelling index Figure 1. Yield surfaces of the SS-model in p’-q-plane
which determines soil behaviour during unloading
and reloading. This behaviour is assumed to be elastic 2.2 Soft-Soil-Creep model
and is described by Hooke’s law of elasticity. Eq. (3) Buisman (1936) was probably the first to propose a
implies the following linear stress dependency of the constitutive law for creep after observing that soft soil
tangent stiffness modulus. settlements cannot be fully explained by classic con-
solidation theory. In the framework of 1D-secondary





compression other researchers like Bjerrum (1967),
   
(4)

and Garlanger (1972) should be mentioned. More
mathematical lines of research on 3D-creep were fol-
The subscript ur is used to specify that the param- lowed by, for example, Sekiguchi (1977), Adachi and
eters are related to unloading and reloading. In the Oka (1982) and Borja and Kavaznjian (1985).
SS-model 
and  are used as input parameters to Butterfield (1979) proposes a creep equation of the
compute the elastic strains. form
For triaxial stress states the yield function of the
SS-model is defined as  

 


 





(8)
 


 (5)

where
 is related to the actual stress state and

 is where the deformation during consolidation is given


the equivalent pre-consolidation stress, see Fig. 1. by the expression
. The modified creep index 
describes the secondary compression per logarithmic
¾ time increment. In this equation is the logarith-

   
  


 
 
  
mic strain. The superscript    is applied because the
¾   
(6)
logarithmic strain measurement was originally used
This stress
 by Hencky. In case of large strains both Butterfield
 is a function of the plastic strain.
(1979) and Den Haan (1994) showed that logarithmic

   strain supersedes the traditional engineering strain.
 


 
¼  (7) Please note, that the time 
is not the consolidation


time 
. The time 
is not a material parameter either
The yield function  (Eq. (5)) can be described as el- as it not only depends on the consolidation but also
lipses in the
 - -plane. The tops of the ellipses are on the geometry of the tested sample. Janbu (1969)
located on a line with the inclination  . In the mod- developed a construction for evaluating the parameter
ified Cam-Clay model (Burland 1965, 1967) the  - 
and the time 
from experimental data. This and
line represents the critical state line, which describes the difference between 
and 
is shown in Fig. 2.
the stress states at post peak failure. It should be .
noted that in the SS-model the MC-criterion with the tc 1/e
ln t
strength parameters  and  is used to describe the
failure. Both the MC-line and the  -line are given ec
the same shift of 
 away from the origin. This
1 tc 1
*
m m*
is illustrated in Fig. 1 and is taken into account in (Eq.
e t´ = tc - t
(6)).
The total yield contour shown in Fig. 1 by the bold . tc
. t´
t

lines is the boundary of the elastic area. The MC- (a) (b)
failure line is fixed, but the cap (ellipse with

 ) may Figure 2. Consolidation and creep behaviour in standard Oe-
increase due to primary compression. dometer tests

2
The strain rate as derived from Eq. (8) reads depends entirely on the amount of the creep strain be-
ing accumulated by time. Eq. (10) can then be written



  as
  or inversely   (9)

   

   


For isotropic stress states one finds the same modified    
creep index 
. Therefore one can include the sec-


     




 


(11)
ondary compression part and combine Eqs. (2) and
¼
¼
(3) to get the total volumetric strain as
where
   

  








 


 
¼   (12)
    






 
  


 Combining Eqs. (10) with (11) one obtains

¼
¼
 



 





     

 (10)



 



 


  

 (13)




where  is the total volumetric strain due to an in-

crease in mean effective stress from
¼ to
 in a time Assuming that in conventional testing the load is in-
period of 
  . The total volumetric strain is divided creased stepwise and each load step is maintained for
into an elastic and a visco-plastic creep part, denoted a constant period of 
    , where  is precisely
by  and  respectively. The visco-plastic part can be one day, the so-called IC-line with
 
 is then ob-
separated into a part during consolidation and a part ¼

tained. Eq. (13) leads for   ¼ 
to
after consolidation. This is given by the subscripts 
and . The subscript  has also been added to the
 
   







elastic strain to indicate that this is also related to con-  

      (14)




solidation. Fig. 3 clarifies these relations.

One should note that the isotropic consolidation With respect to  the difference 

is very small.
line (IC-line) is not reached after the end of consol- So Eq. (14) can be simplified as
idation, but after some creep has occurred. In fact the
    £
 
£
   £
 
£
IC-line is the line obtained while applying one load 



£ £

step per day. This is based on the assumption that con-  or 

   (15)
solidation occurs in less than one day. 




Eq. (10) is valid for a constant mean effective Having derived a expression for 
it is now possible
stress, but for transient or continuous loading prob- to formulate the differential creep equation.
lems it is necessary to formulate a constitutive law
in differential form. Moreover there is still the ques-
 

 



tion of how to express the time 
analytically. There-     
  (16)

 
 
fore the basic idea is adopted that all inelastic strains
are time dependent. Additionally following Bjerrum where 
  can be eliminated by means of Eq. (13)
(1967) it is supposed that the pre-consolidation stress to obtain
 

   £
 
£



£
p´0 p´p0 p´pc p´p p´
ln p´     

    (17)
*
k
 


*
evc = k ln (p´/p´0 )
e
1
where
 is defined as in Eq. (12). Entering Eq. (15)
*
into Eq. (17) one gets
l
    
* *
evccr = (l -k ) ln (p´pc/p´p0 ) £
 
£

 

      
 
£


 (18)
1 cr
vac
*
e = m ln (tc +t´/tc )


Assuming the same yield function as in the SS-model
IC-line
(1-day load step curve)
(Eq. (5)) the strain rate can then be defined as
ev


 
  
£
 
£

Figure 3. Logarithmic relationship between volumetric strain


½ 
£


     (19)
and mean stress including creep  

  

3
where In Tab. 2 the other parameters for the
sub-layers of


  BBC are plotted. All parameters were determined ac-
 


 
¼  (20) cording to the detailed subsoil description of Ladd,


Whittle and Legaspi (1994). The chosen ratio be-
 tween the modified soil parameters is 

  and
and  is defined as   
. Hence the SSC-model
¼


 .
is an extension of the SS-model that takes creep into
account.
DATA

3 ANALYSIS AND RESULTS SSC

Fill
In this paragraph, the results of a back-analysis of SS
Time [years] Time [years]
two embankments are presented. Note that for both 0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5

applied models the input parameters are always the 0 0

20 20
same. The only difference is that the modified creep
index 
is not used in the SS-model. Therefore creep 40 40

Settlements [cm]
60 60
is not taken into account in this model.
0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5
0 0
3.1 Boston Trial Embankment
20 20
An extension of the Interstate highway I-95 north of 40
40
Boston was built in 1965. A portion of the embank-
ment was instrumented with piezometers, settlement
rods and inclinometers. The embankment has a height 0
0 1 2 3 4 5
0
0 1 2 3 4 5

of

 with a crest width of   and a footing 20 20

width of  . It is founded on a   thick sand-layer,
which has an underlying 
 thick deposit of Boston Till
Blue Clay (BBC). The BBC layer is divided into

sub-layers with different compressibility parameters Figure 4. Vertical displacements at different depths under the
and over-consolidation ratios (). Under the em- embankment
bankment the top peat layer is replaced by fill. The
parameters used for the calculation are given in Tab.
1 for sand, fill and peat respectively. The constitutive DATA
law applied to the sand and fill is the Hardening Soil SSC
10
620 Days SS
model (Brinkgreve and Vermeer 1998). The peat was
computed with the MC-model. The following param- 0
eters are the same for all
sub-layers of BBC.
-10
Elevation [m]

 
  

 
   Æ
-20
  
 Æ -30

-40
Table 1. Soil parameters for sand, fill and peat -65 -165 -65 -165 -65 -165

sand fill peat Excess Pore Pressures (kPa)


 18 20 11,8 10



   40 40 - 2000 Days


  

120 120 - 0


 resp. 
   18.5 19 0,208



-10
Elevation [m]

0.5 0.5 -


resp.


 0.2 0.2 0.3 -20

  1 5 5
¼
Æ 37 35 25 -30

Æ 0 0 0


 1 1 1 -40



 0.426 0.398 0.577 -65 -165 -65 -165 -65 -165



 0.45 0.398 0.577 Excess Pore Pressures (kPa)

Figure 5. Pore-pressure distribution in different sections

4
 Table 2. Soil parameters for Boston Blue Clay
layer A B1 B2 C1 C2 D E1 E2 E3 F1 F2 F3





  19 17.7
 


 2 1.5


   15.8 10.4 6.3 7.1 7.8 5.9
£
   0.522 0.652 0.870 1.304 1.957 1.522


 8.34 4.6 3.07 2.25 1.77 1.44 1.25 1.21 1.18 1.16 1.14 1.11


 1.35 1.08 0.85 0.80 0.65 0.60 0.57 0.57 0.56 0.56 0.56 0.55

The inclination  of the critical state line is signif- ing parameters are for all 9 sub-layers the same.
icantly steeper than the MC-failure line to prevent the
overprediction of horizontal deformation. One gets  

 

 
this inclination by choosing a  -value, which yields   
    Æ
to !¼  
  . The overprediction of horizontal
displacements is well known in the framework of the  Æ
classical critical state mechanics. Moreover the value
The other parameters used for the calculations are
for    is chosen to uncouple the elastic strain.
given in Tab. 3. All parameters were taken from the
This is done to reduce the magnitude of the horizon-
literature (Larsson 1997). The ratio between the mod-
tal displacements as well.
ified soil parameters is 

  and 


.
The high -values (Tab. 2) indicate that creep The inclination of the critical state line  is here cho-
will not be so important because about half of the sen to match the !¼  -value correctly, as well.
BBC layer has an -value of at least two, decreas-
ing at the bottom of the layer to a value near one. For
that type of soil the amount of creep will be small in
DATA
comparison to the rest of the settlements. 10 SSC
Figs. 4 to 6 show the calculation results and the 620 Days SS
measurements. The solid lines indicate the measure- 0
Sand
ments, the dashed lines are the results from the SSC- A
model and the dotted lines are the analysis with the -10 B
SS-model. In Fig. 4 one can recognize that consolida-
Elevation [m]

C
tion is not over after the measurement period of 
-20 D
days, because the settlement curves still have an incli-
nation. That fact is supported by Fig. 5, one can see E
that in the center of the BBC there is still a pore-water- -30
pressure of around

  after  days. The F
SSC-model ”slightly” overestimates in the most cases -40
the vertical displacements. Moreover the calculated 0,0 0,1
Till 0,0 0,1 0,0 0,1
pore-water-pressures are slightly higher then those
measured. The horizontal displacements are overes- Horizontal Displacements (m)

timated as well. In most cases the SS-model matches DATA

10 SSC
the measurements better, especially for the deep set- 2000 Days SS
tlements. So it seems that if there are high  val-
0
ues in the soft soils the SSC-model is not so useful. Sand
A
-10 B
3.2 Skå Edeby test embankment
Elevation [m]

C
The test embankment was built on the test site of Skå -20 D
Edeby about 
 west of Stockholm in the year
1961. The embankment has a height of
  with a E

crest width of   and slopes

. The fill was in- -30

strumented with piezometers and settlement markers F

at different locations under and outside the fill. The -40
soil under the embankment consists of soft clay with 0,0 0,1 0,0 0,1 0,0 0,1
Till
a thickness of
  on top of till or rock. The soft
Horizontal Displacements (m)
clay layer is divided into  sub-layers with different
compressibility parameters and s. The follow- Figure 6. Horizontal displacements in different sections

5
 Table 3. Soil parameters for Skå Edeby Den Haan, E. J. (1994). Vertical Compression of Soils. Ph. D.
layer



 
 £

 

 thesis, Delft University.
Garlanger, J. E. (1972). The consolidation of soils
A
B
14.2

   
   0.106
0.091
14.1
2
exhibiting creep under constant effective stress.
Géotechnique 22(1), 71–78.
C
14.4

  
   0.083 1.2 Janbu, N. (1985). 25th rankine lecture: Soil models in off-
D   
  
shore engineering. G éotechnique 35(3), 239–281.
E
  
   Ladd, C. C., A. J. Whittle, and D. E. Legaspi (1994). Stress-
F 16.1
  
  0.076
1.0 deformation behaviour of an embankement on boston
blue clay. In Vertical and Horizontal Deformations of
G
H

 
 
  
0.069
Foundations and Embankments Proceedings of Settle-
ment ’94, College Station Texas, pp. 1730–1759.
Larsson, R. (1997). Consolidation of soft soils. Report 29,
Swedish Geotechnical Institute.
As shown in Tab. 3 the soft clay is almost nor- Sekiguchi, H. (1977). Rheological characteristics of clays. In
Proceedings 9th International Conference on Soil Me-
mally consolidated ( 
). Only the upper  chanics and Foundation Engineering, Volume 1, Tokyo,
have a high  value caused by a crust. Hence, a pp. 289–292.
large amount of creep is to be expected. Furthermore Stolle, D. F. E., P. A. Vermeer, and P. G. Bonnier (1997).
it demonstrates that the settlements as well as the A soft soil model and experiences with two integration
pore-pressures and the horizontal displacements were schemes. Numerical Models in Geomechanics, 123–128.
strongly underestimated by the SS-model whereas the Vermeer, P. A. and H. P. Neher (1999). A soft soil model that
results from the SSC-model and the measured data accounts for creep. In R. B. J. Brinkgreve (Ed.), Proceed-
ings of the International Symposium ”Beyond 2000 in
agree fairly well. Computational Geotechnics”, Amsterdam, pp. 249–261.
Balkema.
4 CONCLUSIONS Vermeer, P. A., D. F. E. Stolle, and P. G. Bonnier (1997). From
After a brief introduction of the SS-model and the classical theory of secondary compression to modern
creep. In J.-X.Yuan (Ed.), Computer Methods and Ad-
SSC-model two test embankments were used for vances in Geomechanics, Volume 4, Wuhan, pp. 2469–
back-analysis. The results show that for overconsol- 2478. Balkema.
idated soils the SSC-model has no advantages com-
pared to the SS-model, because in such case creep DATA
doesn’t play an important role. However in normally SSC
Time [years] SS
consolidated soft clays like in Skå Edeby creep be- 0,0 5,0 10,0 15,0 20,0
comes significant and the SSC-model exceeds the SS- -0,1
model. This should be kept in mind when simulating -0,3
the construction of any building on soft soils. Settlements [m]
-0,5

-0,7
REFERENCES
-0,9
Adachi, T. and F. Oka (1982). Constitutive equation for nor-
mally consolidated clays based on elasto-viscoplasticity.
Soils and Foundations 22, 57–70.
-25,0 -20,0 -15,0 -10,0 -5,0 0,0 -0,02 0,02 0,06 0,10
Bjerrum, L. (1967). 7th rankine lecture: Engineering geol- 0
A
ogy of norwegian normally-consolidated marine clays as
B
related to settlements of buildings. G éotechnique 17(1),
-2 C
81–118.
Borja, R. I. and E. Kavaznjian (1985). A constitutive
model for the stress-strain-time behaviour of ’wet’ clays. -4 D
Géotechnique 35(3), 283–298.
Elevation [m]

Brinkgreve, R. B. J. and P. A. Vermeer (Eds.) (1998). PLAXIS -6 E

Finite Element Code for Soil and Rock Analyses. Rotter-
dam: A.A.Balkema.
-8 E
Buismann, K. (1936). Results of long duration settlement
tests. In Proceedings 1st International Conference on
Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, Volume 1, -10 F
Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp. 103–107.
Burland, J. B. (1965). The yielding and dilation of clay (cor- -12 G
respondence). Géotechnique 15(2), 211–214.
Burland, J. B. (1967). Deformation of Soft Clay. Ph. D. thesis, -14 H
Cambridge University.
Excess Pore Pressure [kPa] Horizontal Displacement [m]
Butterfield, R. (1979). A natural compression law for
soils (an advance on e-log p’)(technical note). Figure 7. Time-Settlement-Curve; Pore-pressure distribution af-
Géotechnique 29(4), 469–480. ter 10 years and horizontal displacements after 20 years