Elastoplastic indentation of unsaturated soils using a rigid cylinder

Abstract

We develop a fully coupled finite element solution for elastoplastic indentations of unsaturated granular soils by a rigid cylinder by using a mortar-type contact algorithm. In the presented solution, we have employed an advanced constitutive model that allows the inclusion of the effect of matric suction and induced anisotropy in the problem. Several numerical examples in both static and dynamic scenarios are provided for validation and demonstrating the capabilities of the presented framework.