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This paper studies the excavation of a spherical cavity subjected to hydrostatic initial stresses in the infinite homogeneous and isotropic rock mass with strain-softening Mohr-Coulomb (M-C) and Hoek-Brown (H-B) behaviors. Numerical solutions of the spherical cavity are obtained and the application to determining stress-strain curve of strain-softening M-C and H-B rock mass is studied. A closed-form solution for the elastic-brittle-plastic medium is introduced first, and then a numerical procedure that simplifies the strain-softening process into a series of brittle-plastic ones is presented. The approach is validated against the facts that the strain-softening process evolves into a brittle-plastic one when the softening slope is very steep, whereas it evolves into an elasto-plastic one when the softening slope approaches zero. Numerical solutions for the prediction of displacements and stresses around the spherical cavity in the strain-softening M-C and H-B rock mass are presented. On the basis of the analysis of the spherical cavity in strain-softening rock mass, the stress-strain relationship at an infinitesimal cube around the cavity is obtained and discussed with different evolution laws for the strength parameters considered.

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