Hypoplastic constitutive modeling of wetting deformation of weathered rockfill materials

The wetting deformation of weathered rockfill materials has been attracting growing attention from both engineers and scientists. The importance of realistic predictions of wetting deformations for high earth and rockfill dams is a strong motivation to establish a suitable constitutive model. Recently, the hypoplastic constitutive model by Gudehus and Bauer was extended by introducing solid hardness depending on the state of weathering. The extended model takes into account the influence of the current density, the effective stress state, the rate of deformation, and the time dependent process of degradation of the solid hardness. In the present paper, the performance of this model is evaluated by comparing numerical simulations with experiments obtained from a water sensitive rockfill material. In particular, triaxial compression paths and creep deformation under deviatoric stress states are considered. Finally, the constitutive model proposed is used to study the influence of a degradation of the solid hardness on the long term behavior of a hypothetical fill dam.