Simulation of CPT penetration in sensitive clay

Paper in proceeding, 2022

This paper presents the results from numerical simulations of CPTu penetration in a natural clay combining the SCLAY1S constitutive model with a large deformation Finite Element framework including a coupled deformation and porewater pressure formulation. The hierarchical model formulation of SCLAY1S captures many features of a natural sensitive clay, such as the evolving anisotropic strength-stiffness response, as well as the degradation of the initial bonding. A sensitivity analysis is performed varying the overconsolidation ratio (QCR), bonding and anisotropy, also the hydraulic conductivity (hence, cv) of the clay. The findings indicate that some soil properties (the cv and OCR) impact both the normalised cone resistance Qt and the generation of excess porewater pressures. In contrast the sensitivity St of soft soils primarily affects Qt. In the current work it seems that the effects of the inherent and stress induced (from CPT penetration) anisotropy is not detected using these normalised plots.