Soils and Foundations 2016;56(4):704–711

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Technical Paper

An extended hypoplastic constitutive model for frozen sand

Guofang Xua,n, Wei Wua, Jilin Qib
a
Institute of Geotechnical Engineering, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna
b
School of Civil and Transportation Engineering, Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, China
Received 25 May 2015; received in revised form 28 March 2016; accepted 19 April 2016
Available online 29 July 2016

Abstract

This paper presents a hypoplastic constitutive model for frozen sand. The model is obtained by introducing temperature-dependent cohesion
and a deformation-related function for strain softening. The extended model is simple in mathematical formulation and contains only eight
parameters, which can be easily obtained from conventional triaxial tests. The model performance is shown by simulating a series of triaxial
compression tests at different temperatures and confining pressures.
& 2016 The Japanese Geotechnical Society. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Keywords: Hypoplasticity; Constitutive model; Frozen sand; Mechanical behavior

1. Introduction
Engineering activities in permafrost regions are on the rise
worldwide. For such projects, the strength and deformation of
frozen soil plays an important role. There is urgent need for
appropriate constitutive models for the mechanical behaviors
of frozen soil.
1.1. Previous work on modeling frozen soil
As a special geo-material, frozen soil contains ice and
unfrozen water. Such multiphase media show rather complex
mechanical behaviors and are difficult to model. Nevertheless,
constitutive modeling of frozen soil has attracted intensive
research in the past decades. The existing constitutive models
for frozen soil can be classified into three categories, namely
(1) empirical stress–strain relationships, (2) microscopic models
and (3) elastoplastic models. (1) Empirical stress–strain rela-
tionships. Sayles (1973) analyzed the stress–strain relationship
n
Corresponding author.
Peer review under responsibility of The Japanese Geotechnical Society.
of frozen Ottawa sand based on triaxial shear tests and triaxial
creep tests. Zhu et al. (1992) conducted numerous uniaxial
compression tests at different temperatures and strain rates on
different frozen soils. Then two types of stress–strain equations,
namely, elastoplastic and visco-elastoplastic, were proposed for
the stress–strain curves. All these efforts helped to understand
the mechanical behavior of frozen soil in the early days.
However, the application of such stress–strain equations was
rather limited, because they were set up especially for certain
test condition. (2) Microscopic damage models. Such models
were developed by introducing a damage variable into the
stress–strain equation, which relates the microstructural change
with the macroscopic mechanical behavior of frozen soil. Miao
et al. (1995) proposed a damage creep model by considering the
microstructure of frozen soil in isothermal creep tests. Particle
orientation and area reduction were introduced as the damage
variables. Based on continuum mechanics and thermodynamics,
He et al. (1999) proposed a damage constitutive model for
frozen soil, in which a damage threshold and dissipation
potential function were studied. Liu et al. (2005) defined a
damage function for frozen Lanzhou loess based on the uniaxial

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0038-0806/& 2016 The Japanese Geotechnical Society. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
 G. Xu et al. / Soils and Foundations 56 (2016) 704–711
compression test results obtained with X-ray CT method. They
developed a damage constitutive model for frozen soil under
uniaxial compression. Ning and Zhu (2007) set up a relationship
between the elastic constants of soil, ice and that of frozen soil
mass based on the mesomechanics of composite materials. The
result was a constitutive model which takes the evolution of
damage into consideration. The advantage of these models is
that they explain the macroscopic mechanical behavior of frozen
soil from a microscopic view. However, describing the damage
evolution for frozen soil posed a great challenge to the
investigators. (3) Macroscopic elastoplastic constitutive models.
Cai et al. (1990) separated the total strain rate into viscoelastic
strain rate and plastic strain rate components, and proposed a
visco-elastoplastic constitutive model for frozen soil, which was
suitable for monotonic loading and cyclic loading. Rong et al.
(2005) proposed two formulas for calculating the Green stress
and Kirchhoff stress, and developed a constitutive model for
frozen soils under finite deformation. Based on triaxial com-
pression tests on frozen Qinghai-Tibet sandy soil, Lai et al.
(2009) obtained the plastic potential and failure surface with the
help of orthogonal flow rule, and then proposed an elastoplastic
constitutive model for frozen sand. It should be noted that these
models were obtained by analogy with the constitutive models
for unfrozen soils within the framework of plasticity theory,
which is mainly based on experiments or hypotheses (Li, 2004).
Although the constitutive models discussed above have
achieved certain degrees of success, some problems remain
unsolved. Most models have rather complicated mathematical
formulation.
1.2. Brief introduction to hypoplasticity
Recently, hypoplastic constitutive models have become
quite popular in describing the mechanical behavior of
granular materials. In hypoplasticity, the stress rate is for-
mulated as a nonlinear tensor function of stress and strain rate
based on the representation theorem for isotropic tensor
functions. Compared with traditional elastoplasticity theory,
hypoplasticity has many advantages, such as: (1) the model
does not have an elastic range and the stress–strain relationship
is incrementally nonlinear from the beginning of loading;
(2) distinction between loading and unloading is not necessary,
since the loading-unloading criterion is incorporated in the
models; and (3) hypoplastic constitutive equations have simple
mathematical formulation with few parameters. A number of
hypoplastic constitutive models (Kolymbas, 1985; Wu and
Kolymbas, 1990; Wu, 1992; Wu and Bauer, 1994; Wu et al.,
1996; Herle and Kolymbas, 2004; Huang et al., 2006; Mašín,
2013) have been developed for various geo-materials and can
be applied to various boundary problems, e.g. retaining walls
(Qiu and Grabe, 2012), pile driving (Osinov et al., 2013),
tunnel under earthquake (Hleibieh et al., 2014), debris flow
(Fang and Wu, 2014a, 2014b) and slope stability (Peng et al.,
2015). Hypoplasticity has been proved to be a powerful tool in
describing various soil properties, such as nonlinear mechan-
ical behavior, dependence on stress path, shear dilation and
strain softening.
705
1.3. Feasibility of modeling frozen soil with hypoplasticity
Most macroscopic constitutive models regard frozen soil as a
homogeneous continuum, with ice distributed uniformly in the
soil mass. This makes it possible to model frozen soils with
hypoplasticity, which is based on continuum mechanics. Sec-
ondly, many test results (Sayles, 1966; Ladanyi, 1981; Haynes
and Karalius, 1977; Parameswaran, 1980; Bragg and Andersland,
1981) reveal that the most significant factor which governs the
mechanical properties of frozen soil is temperature. This can be
attributed to the following two aspects. Firstly, the mechanical
properties of ice in frozen soil are strongly dependent on
temperature, and secondly the bonding strength of the interface
between soil grain and ice is also very sensitive to temperature.
From this point of view, the strength of frozen soil consists of two
parts, namely the strength of soil skeleton and the ice cementa-
tion, see also Goughnour and Andersland (1968). Therefore,
when the cementation of ice is taken into account, a hypoplastic
constitutive model for frozen soil can be built on the hypoplastic
models for cohesionless soil.
2. The extended hypoplastic model for frozen sand
2.1. Hypoplastic constitutive model for sand
In the work by Wu and Kolymbas (1990), a general
hypoplastic constitutive model was defined as follows
1 ¼ LðT; DÞþ NðTÞ‖D‖
T ð1Þ
where T is the Cauchy stress tensor, D is strain rate tensor,
LðT; DÞ and NðTÞ are linear and nonlinear isotropic tensor
functions with respect to stress T, respectively. ‖D‖ ¼
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
 
tr D2 stands for the Euclidean norm of strain rate tensor,
1 is the Jaumann rate of Cauchy stress tensor and is defined as
T
1 ¼ T_ þ TW  WT
T ð2Þ
where T_ is the time derivative of Cauchy stress tensor, W is
the spin tensor. The Jaumann rate of stress tensor equals to the
time derivative when the spin tensor is 0.
In order to obtain a concrete form, model (1) should be
subjected to three restrictions (Wu and Bauer, 1994). (i) Rate
independence. To start with a simple case, the constitutive
model is considered to be rate independent, i.e. the Jaumann
rate of Cauchy stress should be positively homogeneous of the
first degree in D. (ii) Objectivity under rigid rotation. This
requirement can be satisfied when the model is chosen
according to the representation theorem for isotropic tensor
functions. (iii) Stress dependence. Many test results show that
the strength and initial tangent modulus of sand depend
proportionally on stress level. Hence, the Jaumann rate of
Cauchy stress should be homogeneous in T. According to
these restrictions, Wu (1992) proposed the following hypo-
plastic constitutive model for sand
trðTDÞ T2 T2
T_ ¼ c1 ðtrTÞD þ c2 T þ c3 ‖D‖ þ c4 d ‖D‖ ð3Þ
trT trT trT
706 G. Xu et al. / Soils and Foundations 56 (2016) 704–711
in which ci (i¼ 1–4) are dimensionless material parameters.
trðU Þ is the trace of the tensor ð UÞ. The subscript d denotes the
deviatoric part of the corresponding tensor. This model is
capable of capturing the salient behavior of sand under
monotonic loading and applicable to both drained and
undrained conditions. Based on this model, a constitutive
model for frozen sand is developed. This is presented in the
next section.
2.2. The extended hypoplastic constitutive model
For the above hypoplastic constitutive model proposed by Wu
(1992), it should be noted that the limit surface is a cone with its
apex at the origin in the principal stress space. Therefore, such
model allows no tensile stress. This is obviously not appropriate
for frozen soils which can sustain certain tension owing to ice
cementation. However, this shortcoming can be overcome by
extending the constitutive equation with a backpressure s as
1 ¼ LðT; s; DÞþ NðT; sÞ‖D‖
T ð4Þ
in which s is an isotropic tensor similar to the spherical part of
stress tensor. The isotropic tensor s is determined by a single
scalar s as s ¼ sI, in which s can be regarded as the cohesion of
frozen soil and I is the unit tensor. It is worth noting that different
chemical or physical causes for cohesion give rise to different
material behaviors. In the present paper, the value of s is related
only to the temperature of frozen soil. Effects of water content
and other factors of frozen soil are not taken into account.
Based on the work by Wu et al. (1996) on granular materials
and Bauer and Wu (1995) on cohesive powders, the hypo-
plastic constitutive model for frozen sand can be constructed in
the following way
tr½ðT sÞD
T_ ¼ c1 ½trðT  sÞD þ c2 ðT  sÞ
trðT  sÞ
  ‖D‖
þ f ϵ U c3 ðT  sÞ2 þ c4 ðT  sÞ2d ð5Þ
tr ðT  sÞ
in which f ϵ is a deformation-related factor, which describes the
strain softening behavior of frozen sand. Model (5) shows two
linear terms and two nonlinear terms in the strain rate. For such
models, when applying the Euler's theorem for homogeneous
functions they can be summarized to a subclass which can be
expressed as
h !i
T_ ¼ LðTÞþ NðTÞ⨂ D ∶D ð6Þ
in which L is a fourth order tensor, N is a second order tensor
!
and D i ¼ Di =‖D‖ (i ¼ 1–3) denotes the direction of the unit
strain rate tensor. From (6) it is clear that the summation in the
parentheses represents the hypoplastic stiffness tensor, which
depends not only on stress level, but also on the direction of
strain rate.
Many experimental results (Haynes and Karalius, 1977;
Bourbonnais and Ladanyi, 1985) show that the shear strength
of frozen soils depends linearly on temperature when the
temperature is not lower than –15 1C. In view of this, we
assume that the value of s can be related to temperature as
s ¼ aθ þ b ð7Þ
where θ is the temperature of frozen soil, a and b are
coefficients. The rationality of this assumption can be found
in the work by Sinitsyn and Løset (2010). The deformation-
related factor is given by the following expression
f ϵ ¼ 2  expðαlþ βÞ ð8Þ
where l is the length of strain path in the strain space, α and β
are parameters dependent on temperature. With this factor,
whose value ranges from 1.0 to 2.0, the strain softening
behavior of frozen soil can be described.
2.3. Calibration of the extended model
Altogether there are 8 parameters in the extended constitu-
tive model. These parameters can be classified into two groups.
The first group comes from the original model (Wu, 1992), i.e.
material constants ci (i ¼ 1–4). They can be determined based
on a series of conventional triaxial tests. In the determination,
the initial tangent modulus, initial Poisson's ratio, friction angle
and dilation angle at failure are required. The detailed
procedures to determine ci can be found in the publication
by Wu and Bauer (1994). Here we focus on the parameters in
the second group which contains the other 4 parameters, a, b, α
and β. As can be seen from Eq. (7), parameters a and b
describe the dependence of cohesion on temperature, so a and
b can be obtained from the cohesion-temperature curve, see
Fig. 1. Parameters α and β are related to the configuration of
stress–strain curve, e.g. strain softening or strain hardening.
They can be determined by fitting the triaxial test results.
Parametric study shows that when the temperature of frozen
soil is not lower than –15 1C, α has a range of [ 1.0, 0], and β
is located in [ 0.005, 0.005].
3. Performance of the extended model
In this section, two series of triaxial compression tests are
simulated with the extended hypoplastic model. Then the
simulated results are compared to the experimental results to
check the performance of the extended model.
3.1. Laboratory triaxial compression tests
3.1.1. Specimen preparation
A manufactured sand, with a spherical grain shape and the
content of silicon dioxide no less than 98%, was used in the
compression tests. The sand was produced in Xiamen, China.
The maximum and minimum grain sizes of the sand were
2.0 mm and 0.075 mm, respectively. The specimen preparation
could be summarized as follows. First, dry specimens were
prepared by pluviating the sand into a rigid mold, which could
prohibit radial frost heave during freezing. The sand pluviation
method could guarantee a relatively uniform bulk density
Stetzler-Kaufmann (1983). Then, sufficient de-aired water
flushed upwards to saturate the dry specimen in a closed
 G. Xu et al. / Soils and Foundations 56 (2016) 704–711
Fig. 1. Determination of parameters a and b.
vacuum container. The specimens were then frozen quickly at
a temperature of –30 1C to avoid the formation of ice lenses.
Such prepared specimens had a dry unit weight of 18.2 kN/m3
and relative density of 83% (the dry densities of the sand are
ρdmin ¼ 1.61 g/cm3, ρdmax ¼ 1.87 g/cm3). The dimensions of the
specimen were 61.8 mm in diameter and 125.0 mm in height.
3.1.2. Test procedures
All the triaxial compression tests were conducted in a self-
developed test apparatus, which consisted of the following
4 parts: axial loading system, radial loading system, cooling
system and data acquisition system. The detailed procedures
for conducting the compression test are presented below.
i) Pre-cooling. Before testing, the loading cap, pedestal, oil
which was used to control the temperature and confining
pressure were kept at the minus temperature required by
the test. This guaranteed that the specimen did not melt
when being installed.
ii) Installing the specimen. When the pre-cooling was fin-
ished, the specimen was taken out from the mold and
placed into a rubber membrane, then installed quickly into
the chamber of the test machine. Afterwards the chamber
was sealed and covered with an insulation shield. The
temperature of the oil was maintained at the target value
planned for the test for 24 h using the cooling system.
iii) Loading process. When the temperatures around the
specimen were stable, a hydrostatic pressure equal to the
required confining pressure was applied to the specimen
and kept unchanged. Then an axial load was applied by a
piston with a constant loading rate of 1.25 mm/min.
During the whole loading process, the axial stress, axial
deformation and radial deformation were recorded auto-
matically by the data acquisition system.
707
iv) Removing specimen. When the test was finished, the
confining oil was recycled and the specimen taken out.
Then the characteristics of deformation and failure mode
were recorded.
3.2. Simulation of conventional triaxial tests
In this section, the extended hypoplastic constitutive model
is used to simulate some triaxial compression tests at different
temperatures and confining pressures. Then the simulated
results are compared to the test results.
Based on the extended model, the governing differential
equations for a conventional triaxial compression test can be
expressed as
ðT1 s1 ÞD1 þ 2ðT3 s3 ÞD3
T_ 1 ¼ c1 ½ðT1 s1 Þ þ 2ðT3  s3 ÞD1 þ c2
ðT1 s1 Þ þ 2ðT3 s3 Þ
 
4
ðT1  s1 Þþ f ϵ c3 ðT1  s1 Þ þ c4 ðT1  T3 Þ
2 2
9
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
D1 þ 2D3
2 2
 ð9Þ
ðT1  s1 Þ þ 2ðT3  s3 Þ
ðT1 s1 ÞD1 þ 2ðT3 s3 ÞD3
T_ 3 ¼ c1 ½ðT1 s1 Þ þ 2ðT3  s3 ÞD3 þ c2
ðT1 s1 Þ þ 2ðT3 s3 Þ
 
1
ðT3  s3 Þþ f ϵ c3 ðT3  s3 Þ2 þ c4 ðT1  T3 Þ2
9
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
D21 þ 2D23
 ð10Þ
ðT1  s1 Þ þ 2ðT3  s3 Þ
in which T1 and T3 are the axial and radial stresses,
respectively; D1 and D3 are the axial and radial strain rates,
and T_ 1 and T_ 3 are the stress rates in the axial and radial
direction. In the above two equations, the backpressure s can
be determined based on Eq. (7), and the factor f ϵ can be
calculated according to Eq. (8) by setting l ¼ 0 at the beginning
of the test. Recalling the boundary conditions for a conven-
tional triaxial compression test, i.e. keeping the confining
pressure unchanged (T_ 3 ¼ 0) and compressing the specimen at
a constant axial rate, e.g. D1 Δt ¼ –0.0005 (note that the
negative sign denotes compression and any positive scalar
can serve as the magnitude of strain increment, since the
constitutive model is rate-independent), Eqs. (9) and (10)
contain only two unknowns, i.e. T_ 1 and D3 . Therefore, the
integration algorithm for the simulation can be presented as:
(i) in each time step of the simulation, the radial strain
increment D3 Δt is calculated from Eq. (10); (ii) the radial
strain increment obtained in this way will be substituted into
Eq. (9) to get the axial stress increment; and (iii) the stress state
will be updated to serve as the initial stress state for the
simulation in the next time step.
3.2.1. Simulating the effect of temperature
A series of triaxial compression tests was conducted on
frozen sand at a constant confining pressure (1.0 MPa) and
constant strain rate (1.67  10–4 s–1), however at different
708 G. Xu et al. / Soils and Foundations 56 (2016) 704–711

temperatures, which were –1, –2, –5 and –10 1C. Before level or backpressure no longer holds. It is shown in Fig. 4 that
simulating these tests, the parameters in the extended model the numerical initial stiffness increases with the decrease in
are determined. To this end, we take the test at –5 1C as an temperature. This can be attributed to the increasing ice
example. According to the stress–strain curve and volumetric cementation. Similar conclusions are also obtained by
deformation curve, the following required quantities for Parameswaran (1980), and Zhu and Carbee (1984). Owing to
determination of the material parameters are obtained: the the loss of homogeneity, the data in Fig. 4 are not exactly on a
initial tangent modulus Ei ¼ 195.0 MPa, the initial dilata- straight line. Fig. 5 shows the stiffness evolution at each
ncy angle ψi ¼ –43.01, the frictional angle φ ¼ 33.01 and temperature during the deformation process of the specimens.
dilatancy angle at failure ψf ¼ 271. Based on these values, the From Fig. 5 we can see that, before failure the stiffness
material parameters are calculated as c1 ¼ –62.9, c2 ¼ –664.6, decreases faster at lower temperature. This will lead to an early
c3 ¼ –599.9, c4 ¼ 1082.0. In addition, based on the cohesion- failure in the specimen, because the specimen is more apt to
temperature relationship, the introduced parameters are fail due to brittleness at lower temperature. The same regularity
obtained: a ¼ –369.33 kPa/1C, b ¼ 882.61 kPa. α and β are is also shown by many experimental results, such as those by
fitted as –0.2 and –0.0018, respectively. When the parameters Bragg and Andersland (1981), and Wu and Ma (1994).
at other temperatures are obtained, simple mathem-
atical relationships can be found between the parameters
and temperature, e.g. α ¼ –0.0045θ2 þ 0.0238θ þ 0.0351 and 3.2.2. Simulating the effect of confining pressure
β ¼ 0.00002θ2 þ 0.00008θ–0.0019. The relationships work Triaxial compression tests at different confining pressures
very well for the temperature range of [–15, –1] 1C. (0.3, 0.6, 0.8 and 1.0 MPa) are also simulated. The tests were
With the integration algorithm given above, the triaxial
compression tests at the 4 temperatures are simulated. The
results are shown in Figs. 2 and 3 together with the correspond-
ing experimental results. It can be seen from the experimental
results that, with the decrease of temperature, the strength and
the initial tangent modulus of the frozen sand increase, since the
soil structure is enhanced by the increasing cementation of ice.
On the other hand, the volumetric strain increases and the axial
strain at failure has a tendency to decrease. This can be
attributed to the change of the specimen from a plastic to a
brittle type with the decrease of soil temperature. Comparison
between the simulated and experimental results shows that the
above behaviors can be well captured by the proposed model.
Based on Eq. (6), the hypoplastic stiffness of the specimens
under different test conditions is analyzed. The hypoplastic
stiffness derived from the original model (Wu, 1992) is Fig. 3. Volumetric deformation at different temperatures.
homogeneous in stress, i.e. the stiffness is related to stress
level with a proportional function. However, with the intro-
duction of the backpressure s, the homogeneity with respect to
either stress level or backpressure is broken. Therefore, the
proportional relationship between the stiffness and the stress

Fig. 2. Stress–strain relationship at different temperatures. Fig. 4. Initial stiffness at different temperatures.
 G. Xu et al. / Soils and Foundations 56 (2016) 704–711
Fig. 5. Stiffness evolution at different temperatures.
Fig. 6. Stress–strain relationship at different confining pressures.
Fig. 7. Volumetric deformation at different confining pressures.
709
Fig. 8. Initial stiffness at different confining pressures.
conducted on the prepared frozen silty sand at the temperature
of –4.0 1C and a strain rate of 1.67  10–4 s–1. The simulated
results are presented in Figs. 6 and 7. From Fig. 6 it can be
seen that both the strength and axial strain at failure increase
with the increase of confining pressure. This observation can
be well reproduced by the extended model. The volumetric
deformations of the specimens are shown in Fig. 7, from which
it can be seen that the frozen soil specimen dilates at all
confining pressures. The lower the confining pressure is, the
larger the dilation will be. Comparison of the results indicates
that the extended model is capable of describing the character-
istic of deformation at different confining pressures.
The hypoplastic stiffness at different confining pressures is
also analyzed. Fig. 8 shows that the initial stiffness increases
with confining pressure. Fig. 9 elaborates for each confining
pressure the stiffness evolution with specimen deformation.
From Fig. 9 it can be seen that: (i) the stiffness decreases at the
beginning of the test, then reaches 0, at which the specimen
fails. After failure, the stiffness becomes negative, which
signifies strain softening in the specimen; (ii) the axial strain
at failure for high confining pressure is greater than that for
low pressure. These results are well known for granular
materials and also confirm the observations from Fig. 6.
4. Discussion and conclusion
In this paper, an extended hypoplastic constitutive model is
developed for frozen sand based on the model proposed by Wu
(1992) together with some novel ideas on the constitution of
the strength of frozen sand. Then two series of triaxial
compression tests (one at different temperatures and the other
at different confining pressures) on frozen sand are simulated.
710 G. Xu et al. / Soils and Foundations 56 (2016) 704–711
Fig. 9. Stiffness evolution at different confining pressures.
Comparison between the simulated and experimental results
shows that the extended model can describe the main
mechanical properties of frozen sand, such as the stress–strain
relationship, stiffness and strain softening.
On the application of the extended model, one should be
aware of the following issues. (1) The extended model is
developed within the framework of hypoplasticity, which has
the background of continuum mechanics. It cannot account for
the effect of the internal structure (such as ice distribution) of
frozen soil. (2) The extended model may have problems in
describing the mechanical properties of frozen soil at the
temperature close to 0 1C. (3) The rheological properties of
frozen soil, such as creep and relaxation, cannot be considered
by the extended model. However, research efforts to overcome
these problems are still ongoing.
Acknowledgments
GX would like to acknowledge the China Scholarship
Council (CSC) for its financial support on study abroad
granted to Mr. Guofang Xu (No. 2010491035). The authors
wish to thank the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and European
Commission (EC) for their financial supports to the projects
Studies of Failure Initiation in Unsaturated Slopes (No. TR
L656) and Reinforced Vegetation Numerical Evaluation of
Slopes (REVENUES, Grant Agreement No. 324466). The
National Natural Science Foundation of China and Beijing
Municipal Commission of Education are also acknowledged
for their financial supports to the projects Hypoplastic Con-
stitutive Model for Warm Frozen Soils (No. 41172253) and the
Importation and Development of High-Caliber Talents Project
of Beijing Municipal Institutions granted to Dr. Jilin Qi
(CIT&TCD20150101).
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