SCIENCE CHINA

Technological Sciences
• RESEARCH PAPER • October 2012 Vol.55 No.10: 2877–2892
doi: 10.1007/s11431-012-4979-2

Modeling and behaviours of rockfill materials in three-dimensional

stress space
XIAO Yang1,2, LIU HanLong1,2*, ZHU JunGao1,2 & SHI WeiCheng1,3
1
Key Laboratory of Ministry of Education for Geomechanics and Embankment Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China;
2
Geotechnical Research Institute, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China;
3
School of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Changzhou Institute of Technology, Changzhou 213002, China

Received February 5, 2012; accepted July 2, 2012; published online August 18, 2012

A bounding surface model incorporating a unified nonlinear strength criterion is proposed. The proposed bounding surface
model contains 9 model parameters, which can be determined from the conventional triaxial tests. The bounding surface model
can reproduce such behaviours as the strain hardening, the post-peak strain softening, and the volumetric strain contraction and
expansion. Based on the comparisons between the predictions and the test results, the proposed strength criterion and model
can well reproduce the experimental results of the strength and stress-strain behaviours of rockfill material in three-dimen-
sional stress space. The strength behaviour of rockfill material is summarized as: (a) the failure stress ratio decreases with the
initial confining pressure on the meridian plane; (b) the failure deviatoric stress decreases with the Lode angle from 0º to 60º
on the deviatoric plane. The stress ratio decreases with increasing one of such factors as the initial void ratio, the intermediate
principal stress ratio and the minor principal stress at the same strain when the other factors are given.

bounding surface, strength, stress-strain, three-dimensional stress, constitutive model, rockfill materials

Citation: Xiao Y, Liu H L, Zhu J G, et al. Modeling and behaviours of rockfill materials in three-dimensional stress space. Sci China Tech Sci, 2012, 55:
28772892, doi: 10.1007/s11431-012-4979-2

1 Introduction terial should be larger than the convenient equipment. Large

triaxial compression equipments were used to test the
strength and stress-strain behaviours of rockfill material
Rockfill dams are increasingly used for irrigation, power
[1–3]. Besides, researchers investigated the mechanical be-
generation, and flood control due to their inherent flexibility,
haviours of rockfill material by direct shear tests [4], plain
capacity to absorb large seismic energy, and adaptability to
strain tests [5], biaxial compression tests [6–8] and in-situ
various foundation conditions. Besides, they can economize
tests [9, 10]. However, the stress paths in those tests are
construction cost since most of rockfill materials are ob-
limited to the axial-symmetric stress state or two-dimen-
tained from local sources. The application of modern mov-
sional stress space, which is different from the stress state in
ing equipment for earth and rock and the locally available
the field [11]. Therefore, it is significant to investigate the
material makes those dams economical. Rockfill material
strength and stress-strain behaviours of rockfill material in
from blasting parent rock is the main material in construc-
three-dimensional stress.
tion of rockfill dam. Since the particle size is usually larger
Constitutive model is the key part of soil mechanical
than the general soil, the testing equipment for rockfill ma-
theory. Many constitutive models were proposed to predict
mechanical behaviours of rockfill material. Hyperbolic
*Corresponding author (email: hliuhhu@163.com) model was early used for capturing the stress-strain behav-

© Science China Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012 tech.scichina.com www.springerlink.com
2878 Xiao Y, et al. Sci China Tech Sci October (2012) Vol.55 No.10

iours of rockfill materials [12, 13]. Hypoplastic constitutive nonlinear strength criterion [49] shown in Figure 1 was
models were proposed to describe the mechanical charac- proposed for soil, which can be expressed as follows:
teristics of rockfill materials [14, 15]. Specific constitutive
 q   p 
models were also developed for rockfill materials [16‒19]. lg    n lg    lg  M a g ( )   0, (1)
Some researchers [2, 20] tried to propose constitutive mod-  pa   pa 
els for rockfill materials based on the disturbed state con-
cept (DSC) [21–25]. Bounding surface plasticity was first where pa is the atmosphere pressure; n is the material pa-
developed for metals by Dafalias and Popov [26]. It was rameter; Ma is the strength parameter corresponding to the
then applied to pavement base materials [27], to cohesive atmosphere pressure; the mean principal stress p and the
soils [28–30], to sands [31, 32], to concrete [33], to geo- deviatoric stress q can be expressed by three principal
synthetic reinforcements [34], and to rockfill material [35, stresses 1, 2 and 3 as follows:
36]. Particle breakage of rockfill material gets obvious with 1   2   3
increasing the confining pressure. Thus, constitutive model p , (2)
3
should capture the effects of particle breakage on the me-
chanical behaviours. Russell and Khalili [36] established a 1
 1   2    2   3    3   1 
2 2 2
bounding surface model incorporating a three-segment type q . (3)
2
CSL (the critical state line) to describe the behaviour of
crushable granular materials. But, the mathematical depic- The Lode angle  is expressed as follows:
tion of the three-segment type CSL was very complex.
Some researchers deduced models from the stress dilatancy 1 3 3 J 
  arccos  3
32 

, (4)
equation obtained from the energy dissipation due to shear- 3  2 J 2 
ing and crushing [37–40]. Yao et al. [41] and Sun et al. [42]
used a modified hardening parameter in constitutive models where the deviatoric invariants J2 and J3 are defined as
in order to take into account the effect of particle crushing.
J 2   S1 S 2  S 2 S3  S3 S1 , (5a)
Hu et al. [43] introduced a two-yield surface plastic model
incorporating the relative breakage defined by Einav [44, J 3  S1 S 2 S3 . (5b)
45] to reproduce the stress-strain behaviour of granular ma-
terials. Chen et al. [46] proposed a model incorporating par- The stresses S1, S2 and S3 in eq. (5) are given as
ticle breakage for rockfill material within the framework of
S1   1  p, (6a)
generalized plasticity. However, few researches focused on
modeling the strength, dilatancy and stress-strain behav- S 2   2  p, (6b)
iours for rockfill materials in three-dimensional stress space
[47, 48]. S3   3  p. (6c)
For the sake of simplicity, the degree of particle crushing
is not incorporated in the constitutive equation but consid- Only isotropic strength characteristics are considered in this
ered as a factor influencing the strength and stress-strain paper. The shape function of the UNS criterion on the devi-
behaviour. Based on the way introduced by Yao [41], a uni- atoric plane is written as
fied nonlinear strength (UNS) criterion considering the ef-
fect of particle breakage was introduced [49]. Then, a boun-
ding surface model incorporating UNS criterion was estab-
lished for considering particle breakage, while the past
model [50] cannot predict the influences of particle break-
age on the stress-strain behaviours. It should be specified
that all the stresses in the current formulations denote effec-
tive stresses.

2 Unified nonlinear strength criterion

When taking into account the effect of particle breakage of

rockfill material on strength, the strength behaviour is usu-
ally nonlinear on the meridian plane. Besides, the strength
of rockfill material on the deviatoric plane cannot be simply
described by the Mohr-Coulomb criterion, the Matsuoka-
Figure 1 UNS criterion in three-dimensional stress space.
Nakai criterion and the Lade-Duncan criterion. A unified
 Xiao Y, et al. Sci China Tech Sci October (2012) Vol.55 No.10 2879

r
g ( )  , (7)
r0

where r and r0 are defined as

3 1    3 1    sin 
r   , (8a)
4 l2 cos  3  sin 

3 1    3 1    sin 
r0   ; (8b)
4 l2 cos  0 3  sin 

 and 0 are defined as

1  3 3l2 cos(3 ) 
  arccos   , (9a)
3  2l13 2 

1  3 3l2 
 0  arccos    ; (9b)
3  2l 3 2
 1 
l1 and l2 are defined as Figure 2 UNS criterion on the deviatoric plane.

3  sin 2 
l1  , (10a)
12sin 2 

9  sin 2 
l2  . (10b)
108sin 2 

The internal friction angle  is defined as follows:

 3M 
  arcsin  , (11)
6M 
where the strength parameter M can be expressed by the
secant slope of eq. (1)
n 1
1 q  p
M   Ma   , (12)
g ( ) p  pa 
where the mean effective pressure p is at the critical state.
Based on eq. (12), the critical state line on the deviatoric
plane is nonlinear, which is attributed to the effect of parti-
Figure 3 Current and bounding surfaces in three-dimensional stress
cle breakage of rockfill material. The shape of the UNS space.
criterion on the deviatoric plane is determined by the iso-
tropic parameter . As shown in Figure 2, the loci of the
UNS criterion on the deviatoric plane vary with the param-  
f  p , q , p 0 , p A , M , g  
eter .
 p  p A 
2
q 2
   1  0, (13)
 p 0  p A   Mg   p A 
2 2
3 Bounding surface
where the mean pressure p A corresponding to the peak
Bounding surface plasticity is a versatile model for geo-
materials [26, 31, 32, 34]. As shown in Figure 3, an ellip- point on the bounding surface can be expressed as a func-
soidal surface incorporating the UNS criterion is taken as tion of the ellipsoidal aspect ratio  as follows:
the bounding surface. This bounding surface can be ex- p A   p 0 . (14)
pressed as follows:
2880 Xiao Y, et al. Sci China Tech Sci October (2012) Vol.55 No.10

where p 0 is the mean pressure of the right point that the The increment of elastic strain can be defined as
bounding surface intersects with the hydrostatic axis. p 0 d ie  Cije d j , (21)
controls the evolution of bounding surface.
The ratio of the current surface size with respect to the where the elastic flexibility matrix Cije is expressed as fol-
bounding surface size is defined as lows:
pA p0 1
  . (15) Cije  for i  j , (22a)
p A p 0 E
The initial ratio 0 of the current surface size with re- 
spect to the bounding surface size is an important factor Cije  for i  j. (22b)
E
influencing the modeling behaviour, which will be intro-
duced in the following step. The elastic modulus E in eq. (22) can be expressed as
The image stress on the bounding surface is expressed as follows:
a function of a scalar  as follows: 3(1  2 )(1  e0 ) p
E , (23)
p   p0 , (16a) 

q    p0 , (16b) where the swelling index  is the slope of the isotropic un-
loading in the e-In p plane; e0 is the initial void ratio; the
= , (16c) Poisson ratio v is set as 0.25 for rockfill material.
On the basis of the assumption of associated flow rule,
where the stress ratio  is defined as follows: the increment of plastic strain in bounding surface plasticity
q can be expressed as follows:
 . (17)
p 1
d1p   n1d 1  n2 d 2  n3d 3  n1 , (24a)
H
Substitution of eqs. (14) and (16) into eq. (13) gives the
scalar  as follows: 1
M 2 g 2    3
d 2p   n1d 1  n2 d 2  n3d 3  n2 , (24b)
H
  M  g  
M 2 g 2    2   2 1   
2

1
d 3p   n1d 1  n2 d 2  n3d 3  n3 , (24c)
M g      M g      1      2  1
2
2 2 4 2 2 2 2
H
 
 .
M 2 g 2    2   2 1   
2
where symbol is defined as
(18)
x  x for x  0, (25a)
The ellipse aspect ratio, i.e., the scalar , determines the
plastic flow rule direction. As indicated from eq. (18), the
x  0 for x  0. (25b)
limitative condition for the scalar  should be met as fol-
lows: The unit vector normal to the bounding surface can be
decomposed with the components n1, n2 and n3. The plastic
 (r )  M 4 g 4    6 flow direction in three-dimensional stress space is collinear
  M 2 g 2    2   2 1     to the components n1, n2 and n3, which can be expressed as
2

 
M g     2  1  0.
2 2 2
(19) n1 
1 
( f p p1  fq q1  f1 ), (26a)
L
1 
4 Model equations n2  ( f p p 2  fq q 2  f 2 ), (26b)
L
1 
Similar to the classical plasticity, the total increment of n3  ( f p p 3  fq q 3  f 3 ). (26c)
strain resulting from a stress increment includes the elastic L
and plastic incremental strains in bounding surface plastici- L in eq. (26) can be given as
ty.
d i  d ie  d ip . (20) L  L12  L22  L23 , (27)
 Xiao Y, et al. Sci China Tech Sci October (2012) Vol.55 No.10 2881

where the current surface and the bounding surface.

Similar to the classical plastic theory, the plastic modulus
L1  fp p1  fq q1  f1 , (28a) Hb in the bounding surface plasticity can also be expressed
as
L2  fp p 2  fq q 2  f 2 , (28b)
1 f p 0 
Hb   f p . (34)
L3  fp p 3  fq q 3  f 3 , (28c) L2 p 0  vp

where Combination of eqs. (13), (29), (31) and (34) gives

f 2    4 1  e0              2 2 
fp   , (29a) Hb     . (35)
p 1   2 p 0 L    1     p 0 1   
2 2 2
p 0  M g   
2 2 2
 

f 2  H is determined by the distance between the current sur-

fq   , (29b)
q M 2 g 2    2 p 0 face and the bounding surface. And this distance can be
reflected by the ratio  defined in eq. (15). Thus, the mod-
f 2   g    ulus H can be expressed as a function of the ratio  as fol-
2 2

f   , (29c) lows:

 M 2  2 g 3  
1  e0 1 1
and H  h p M  , (36)
     Mg   p
p 1
p i   , (30a) where h is a modulus parameter; the parameter Mp is the
 i 3
ratio of the peak deviatoric stress with respect to the mean
q 3S i effective stress under the triaxial compression condition.
q i   , (30b) It is the basic requirement in the bounding surface plas-
 i 2 J 2
ticity that the plastic modulus H is dependent on both the
evolution of the bounding surface and the ratio .
 3  3 J 3 Si J 3 1 
      J 2  . (30c)
i
 i 4 J  27 J  2 J 2
3 2 Si 3  H  H b for   1, (37a)
2 3
H   for   0. (37b)
Similar to the assumption of the Modified Cam-Clay
model, the evolution of bounding surface is also related to When  is equal to one, H turns to Hb. And when  is
the plastic volumetric strain, which can be written as smaller than or equal to zero, H gets very larger. Thus, eq.
1 e0
(33) satisfies the basis requirement of the bounding surface
 vp
p 0  p 0ini e   , (31) plasticity. The constitutive equation of the bounding surface
model is finally established. It contains 9 parameters, i.e.,
where e0 is the initial void ratio;  vp is the plastic volumet- Ma, n, , Mp, , ecr0, ,  and h. The determinations of
these parameters will be introduced later. The following
ric strain; the initial stress parameter p 0ini is related to the
part explains how the bounding surface evolves when the
maximum pressure in the loading history and the current bound- ing surface model presents such behaviours as the
void ratio. The values of p 0ini governs the initial size of strain hardening, the post-peak strain softening, and the
bounding surface. The expression of p 0ini is suggested as volumetric strain contraction and expansion.
follows:
5 Evolutions of current and bounding surfaces
p 0ini  pconf e 
  ln 2  ecr0  e0
, (32)

where pconf is the current confining pressure and ecr0 is the
critical void ratio at 1 kPa.
The plastic modulus H in eq. (24) related to the current
stress and the hardening rule can be expressed as follows:
H  H b  H ,
where the plastic modulus Hb is related to the evolution of
the bounding surface; H is related to the distance between
The initial ratio 0 reflects the degree of the difference be-
tween the current surface and the bounding surface. It also
indicates the effects of the initial void ratio on 0 based on
the combinations of eqs. (15), (31) and (32). The initial ratio
(33) 0 increases with the initial void ratio e0. It should be noted
that 0 has a great influence on the modeling of stress-strain
behaviours.
As shown in Figure 4, the prediction of the proposed
2882 Xiao Y, et al. Sci China Tech Sci October (2012) Vol.55 No.10

model, at the loose state corresponding to a relative large

value of 0, usually presents the strain hardening and volu-
metric contraction behaviours. However, as for the dense
state corresponding to a relative small value of 0 shown in
Figure 5, it shows the post-peak strain softening (from point
C to point D), the volumetric contraction at first (from point
A to point B) and then expansion (from point B to point D).
Figure 6 illustrates that the evolution stress p 0 is bigger
than p0 at first. They increase in the whole process of
shearing, and coincide with each other at point B. Finally,
they stay at the critical state together. Figure 7 shows that
p 0 and p0 increase at first then decrease from each peak
point and finally coincide together.
Figures 8 and 9 illustrate the evolutions of the bounding
and current surfaces. The initial bounding surface corre-
sponding to 0=0.68 is much smaller than that correspond-
ing to 0=0.15. As shown in Figure 8, both bounding and Figure 6 Evolution stresses of current and bounding surfaces with
0=0.68.

Figure 4 Relationships among stress ratio, major principal strain and

volumetric strain with 0=0.68.

Figure 7 Evolution stresses of current and bounding surfaces with

0=0.15.

current surfaces enlarge in the whole process of shearing.

And the expansion degree of the current surface is greater
than that of the bounding surface. Figure 9 shows that the
size of the initial bounding surface is much larger than that
of the initial current surface. The size of the bounding sur-
face increases a little then shrinks fast. However, the current
surface expands much more obviously than that of the
bounding surface, and also contracts together with the
bounding surface. Finally, the bounding and current surfac-
es coincide together at the critical state.

6 Determinations of model parameters

Figure 5 Relationships among stress ratio, major principal strain and
volumetric strain with 0=0.15. The proposed bounding surface model contains 9 model
 Xiao Y, et al. Sci China Tech Sci October (2012) Vol.55 No.10 2883

Figure 8 Evolutions of current and bounding surfaces with 0=0.68.

Figure 9 Evolutions of current and bounding surfaces with 0=0.15.

parameters, i.e., Ma, n, , Mp, , ecr0, ,  and h. All these
parameters can be obtained from the conventional triaxial
tests. The detailed determinations of these parameters are
introduced in this part.
(i) Strength parameters Ma, n, Mp and .
The strength parameters Ma and n can be obtained from
data at the failure state in the triaxial compression tests. As
shown in Figure 10, those data displayed in the double log-
arithms of the deviatoric and mean effective stresses can be
well fitted linearly. Thus, the values of parameters Ma and n
can be obtained from these linearly predicted equations. The
parameter Mp can be obtained from the ratio of the peak
deviatoric stress with respect to the mean effective stress
under the triaxial compression condition.
The isotropic strength parameter  can be derived from
the triaxial compression and extension test under the same
mean effective stress. Based on eq. (7), the shape function
with =/3 can be expressed as
2884 Xiao Y, et al. Sci China Tech Sci October (2012) Vol.55 No.10

dictions from eq. (43) in terms of the stress ratio and the
incremental plastic stain ratio.
(iii) Modulus parameters ecr0, ,  and h
As shown in Figure 12, the parameters ecr0 and  can be
obtained from the trend composed of the data from the crit-
ical state in the e-Inp plane. The swelling index  can be
given by the slope of the isotropic unloading in the e-Inp
plane. Figure 13 shows that small strain at the peak stress
ratio corresponds with big value of parameter h. Therefore,
the major principal strain at the peak stress ratio determines
the value of parameter h. All the values of these parame-
ters are listed in Table 1.

7 Model predictions
Figure 10 Determinations of strength parameters on the meridian plane.
7.1 Test introduction
rπ 3 A series of tests on rockfill materials [47] were performed
g (π 3)  , (38)
r0
where r/3 is given as
3 1    3 1    sin 
rπ 3   , (39)
4 l2 cos  π 3 3  sin 

where /3 is expressed as

1  3 3l2 
 π 3  arccos  32 
. (40)
3  2l1 
On the basis of the triaxial compression and extension
test under the same mean effective stress, the shape function
with =/3 can also be expressed as
M conf M
g (π 3)   , (41)
M ext M ext
where Mconf i.e., M, is the strength parameter under the tri- Figure 11 Determination of dilatancy parameter .
axial compression test; Mext is the strength parameter under
the triaxial extension test. The value of  can be obtained
from the combinations of eqs. (38)–(41).
(ii) Dilatancy parameter 
The dilatancy parameter  governs the direction of the
plastic flow rule. The dilatancy equation is defined as
d p fp
D     vp  . (42)
d s fq
Similar to the conventional plastic theory, associated
plastic flow rule is adopted here. Substitution of eq. (29)
into eq. (42) gives
M 2 g 2    2     
D    . (43)
 1    
2

As shown in Figure 11, the value of parameter  can be

Figure 12 Critical state line of rockfill material in the true triaxial tests
selected by comparisons between the test data and the pre- with b=0.
 Xiao Y, et al. Sci China Tech Sci October (2012) Vol.55 No.10 2885

Table 1 Values of model parameters

Parameters Ma n  Mp  ecr0 (102) (103) h0

e0=0.68 2.34 0.85 -0.8 1.99 0.48 0.36 1.36 3.3 0.1
e0=0.26 2.82 0.87 -0.8 2.08 0.45 0.36 1.36 3.3 0.1

Table 2 Test scheme

Paths b=0 b=0.25 b=0.5 b=0.75 b=1

3=100, 125, 150, 3=100, 125, 150, 3=100, 125, 150, 3=100, 125, 150,
e0=0.68 3=100, 125 kPa
200 kPa 200 kPa 200 kPa 200 kPa
3=150, 200, 250, 300, 3=150, 200, 250, 300, 3=150, 200, 250, 300, 3=150, 200, 250, 300, 3=150, 200, 250, 300,
e0=0.26
350, 400 kPa 350, 400 kPa 350, 400 kPa 350, 400 kPa 350, 400 kPa

by the true triaxial apparatus devised in Hohai University.
The rockfill material, the main component of Shuangjiang-
kou core-wall rockfill dam, belongs to gray porphyaceous
texture granite in the mixed lithified biotite. The largest
particle size is approximately 600 mm in Shuangjiangkou
rockfill dam. It is hard to carry out the tests of samples
composed of the real particles. The parallel gradation tech-
nique was used for reducing the particle size. Figure 14
shows the particle distributions of two samples. The initial
void ratios of these samples are 0.68 and 0.26. The experi-
mental scheme was that the minor principal stress 3 and
the intermediate principal stress ratio b were kept as con-
stants in the process of shearing. Table 2 gives the detailed
experimental schemes. The definition of the intermediate
principal stress ratio is give as
b   2   3   1   3  . (44)
When the Lode angle defined in eq. (4) ranges from 0º
to 60º, the relationship between  and b is expressed as fol-
lows:
tan   3b  2  b  . (45)
7.2 Calibration of strength behaviours
The strength behaviours of rockfill material with different
initial void ratios are presented on the meridian plane as
shown in Figures 15. The ratio of the deviatoric stress to the
mean effective stress decreases with the initial confining

Figure 13 Determination of parameter h.

Figure 14 Particle size distribution. Figure 15 Strength on the meridian plane. (a) e0=0.68; (b) e0=0.26
2886 Xiao Y, et al. Sci China Tech Sci October (2012) Vol.55 No.10

pressure. This is mainly due to the particle breakage. Larger
pressure causes more particle breakage. The model predic-
tions in Figure 15 can well reproduce the nonlinear strength
behaviour due to the particle breakage. The failure devia-
toric stress decreases with the Lode angle from 0º to 60º as
shown in Figure 16, which is independent of the initial void
ratio. The proposed failure criterion can agree well with the
test results. The isotropic strength parameter  was set as
0.80 for rockfill material with different initial void ratios.
b is not smaller than 0.25.
(iii) Figures 17–22 illustrate that the stress ratio  de-
creases with increasing the intermediate principal stress
ratio b at the same strain when the initial void ratio e0 and
the minor principal stress 3 are given. Figures 23 shows
that the stress ratio  decreases with increasing the initial

7.3 Calibration of stress-strain behaviours

Figures 17–24 show the comparisons between the test re-

sults and model predictions in terms of relationship between
the stress ratio and the strains with different initial void ra-
tios, intermediate principal stress ratios and the minor prin-
cipal stresses. The main summary from Figures 17–24 is
given as follows:
(i) The proposed model can well reproduce the stress-
strain behaviours of rockfill material in three-dimen-sional
stress space.
(ii) The major and minor principal strains in the whole
process of shearing are positive and negative, respectively,
no matter what the initial void ratio e0, the intermediate
principal stress ratio b and the minor principal stress 3 are.
The intermediate principal strain is negative in the process
of shearing when b=0, while it turns out to be positive when Figure 16 Strength on the deviatoric plane.

Figure 17 Comparisons of the relationships between stress ratio and major principal strain in three-dimensional stress space for different b with e0=0.68.
(a) 3=100 kPa; (b) 3=125 kPa; (c) 3=150 kPa; (d) 3=200 kPa.
 Xiao Y, et al. Sci China Tech Sci October (2012) Vol.55 No.10 2887

Figure 18 Comparisons of the relationships between stress ratio and intermediate principal strain in three-dimensional stress space for different b with
e0=0.68. (a) 3=100 kPa; (b) 3=125 kPa; (c) 3=150 kPa; (d) 3=200 kPa.

Figure 19 Comparisons of the relationships between stress ratio and minor principal strain in three-dimensional stress space for different b with e0=0.68.
(a) 3=100 kPa; (b) 3=125 kPa; (c) 3=150 kPa; (d) 3=200 kPa.
2888 Xiao Y, et al. Sci China Tech Sci October (2012) Vol.55 No.10

Figure 20 Comparisons of the relationships between stress ratio and major principal strain in three-dimensional stress space for different b with e0=0.26.
(a) 3=150 kPa; (b) 3=200 kPa; (c) 3=250 kPa; (d) 3=300 kPa; (e) 3=350 kPa; (f) 3=400 kPa.

void ratio e0 at the same strain when the minor principal
stress 3 and the intermediate principal stress ratio b are
given. The stress ratio  also decreases with increasing the
minor principal stress 3 at the same strain when the initial
void ratio e0 and the intermediate principal stress ratio b are
given as shown in Figure 24.
8 Conclusions
Modeling and mechanical behaviours of rockfill material
are presented by introducing the bounding surface model
and the true triaxial tests. The main summary is given be-
low.
 Xiao Y, et al. Sci China Tech Sci October (2012) Vol.55 No.10 2889

1) A unified nonlinear strength criterion and a bounding
surface plasticity model incorporating this criterion were
introduced. The bounding surface model can reproduce such
behaviours as the strain hardening, the post-peak strain sof-
tening, and the volumetric strain contraction and expansion.
2) The evolutions of the bounding and current surfaces
were also introduced. The proposed bounding surface model
contains 9 model parameters, which can be determined by
the triaxial test data.
3) The proposed strength criterion and model can well

Figure 21 Comparisons of the relationships between stress ratio and intermediate principal strain in three-dimensional stress space for different b with
e0=0.26. (a) 3=150 kPa; (b) 3=200 kPa; (c) 3=250 kPa; (d) 3=300 kPa; (e) 3=350 kPa; (f) 3=400 kPa.
2890 Xiao Y, et al. Sci China Tech Sci October (2012) Vol.55 No.10

Figure 22 Comparisons of the relationships between stress ratio and minor principal strain in three-dimensional stress space for different b with e0=0.26.
(a) 3=150 kPa; (b) 3=200 kPa; (c) 3=250 kPa; (d) 3=300 kPa; (e) 3=350 kPa; (f) 3=400 kPa.

predict the test results of the strength and stress-strain be-
haviours of rockfill material in three-dimensional stress
space.
4) The strength behaviour of rockfill material is present-
ed as: (a) the failure stress ratio decreases with the initial
confining pressure on the meridian plane; (b) the failure
deviatoric stress decreases with the Lode angle from 0º to
60º on the deviatoric plane.
5) The signs of the major and minor principal strains are
positive and negative in the whole process of shearing, re-
 Xiao Y, et al. Sci China Tech Sci
Figure 23 Comparisons of the relationships between stress ratio and
strains for different e with 3=150 kPa and b=0.5.
spectively, which is independent of the initial void ratio, the
intermediate principal stress ratio and the minor principal
stress. However, the sign of the intermediate principal strain
depends on the intermediate principal stress ratio. The stress
ratio decreases with increasing one of such factors as the
initial void ratio, the intermediate principal stress ratio and
the minor principal stress at the same strain when the other
October (2012) Vol.55 No.10 2891
Figure 24 Comparisons of the relationships between stress ratio and
strains for different 3 with e0=0.26. (a) b=0; (b) b=0.5; (c) b=0.75.
factors are given.
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China for Distinguished Young Scholar (Grant No. 50825901), the Public
Service Sector R&D Project of Ministry of Water Resource of China
(Grant No. 200801014), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central
Universities (Grant No. 2011B14514) and Jiangsu Civil Engineering
2892 Xiao Y, et al. Sci China Tech Sci
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