An evaluation of soft soil models based on trial embankments

H.P.Neher & M.Wehnert

Institute of Geotechnical Engineering, University of Stuttgart, Germany

P.G.Bonnier
PLAXIS B.V., Delft, The Netherlands

ABSTRACT: Two constitutive models are introduced briefly and used for back-analysis of two test embankments in order to assess their performance. The Soft-Soil model based on the modified Cam-Clay model, is
employed as a reference model. The Soft-Soil-Creep model is an extension which includes time and strain
rate effects. It simply needs one additional input parameter compared to the Soft-Soil model. Therefore the
performance of these two models can be compared relatively easily. The first embankment considered is the
well-known Boston trial embankment. For this embankment, however, measurements of settlements and horizontal displacements have not been continued long enough to include secondary compression. Consequently,
for the second 2D FE-analysis an embankment with a long period of secondary settlements has been considered.
This is an embankment from the Ska Edeby test site in Sweden.

mary compression, it is clear that creep plays an important part in problems involving large primary settlements, i.e. soft soils. This is for instance the case
for the Boston and Ska Edeby trial embankment on
soft soils considered here.

1 INTRODUCTION
In recent years more and more constructions like
buildings and embankments have been built on soft
soils. Under soft soils the authors consider almost
normally consolidated clays, clayey silts and peats.
The special feature of these materials is their high
compressibility. Considering the tangential oedometer stiffness moduli at a reference vertical pressure of


 , Janbu (1985) reports for normally consolidated clays 
 
to   . For normally consolidated sands he determined values in the range of

 to   . Hence, in oedometer tests normally
consolidated clays behave ten times softer then normally consolidated sands.
Another feature of soft soils is the linear stressdependency of their oedometer stiffness. When plotting a stress-stiffness curve one gets a line of the form

   . That behaviour leads to the well-known
logarithmic compression law

 






The construction of those embankments and their

subsequent behaviour were simulated involving the
deformation and pore-pressure. Two constitutive laws
are used to show the effects of taking creep into account or not. One is the Soft-Soil model (SS-model),
which is based on the modified Cam-Clay model,
using the Mohr-Coulomb (MC) criterion to describe
failure. The other, the Soft-Soil-Creep model (SSCmodel), is an extension to account for creep.
2 MODEL BASICS
The above mentioned two constitutive models are
briefly introduced in this section. They are both implemented in the FE-Code PLAXIS.

(1)

2.1 Soft-Soil model

where compression is regarded positive both for

stresses as well as strains. These considerations are
valid for normal consolidated stress states and do not
include secondary compression.
But all soils exhibit some creep. Hence primary
compression is always followed by a certain amount
of secondary compression. Assuming that the secondary compression is a small percentage of the pri-

The SS-model is based on the modified Cam-Clay

model. A logarithmic relationship between the volumetric strain  and the mean effective stress
is assumed. Because of the usage of the volumetric strain
 instead of the void ratio, Eq. (2) involves the modified compression index  instead of the index  as
used by Burland (1965). For virgin isotropic compres1

sion it yields

   


 

te

(2)








 

2.2 Soft-Soil-Creep model

Buisman (1936) was probably the first to propose a
constitutive law for creep after observing that soft soil
settlements cannot be fully explained by classic consolidation theory. In the framework of 1D-secondary
compression other researchers like Bjerrum (1967),
and Garlanger (1972) should be mentioned. More
mathematical lines of research on 3D-creep were followed by, for example, Sekiguchi (1977), Adachi and
Oka (1982) and Borja and Kavaznjian (1985).
Butterfield (1979) proposes a creep equation of the
form

  


  



(8)

where the deformation during consolidation is given

by the expression
. The modified creep index 
describes the secondary compression per logarithmic
time increment. In this equation is the logarithmic strain. The superscript  is applied because the
logarithmic strain measurement was originally used
by Hencky. In case of large strains both Butterfield
(1979) and Den Haan (1994) showed that logarithmic
strain supersedes the traditional engineering strain.
Please note, that the time  is not the consolidation
time  . The time  is not a material parameter either
as it not only depends on the consolidation but also
on the geometry of the tested sample. Janbu (1969)
developed a construction for evaluating the parameter
 and the time  from experimental data. This and
the difference between  and  is shown in Fig. 2.

(6)

This stress

 is a function of the plastic strain.

 
   
(7)
The yield function  (Eq. (5)) can be described as ellipses in the
- -plane. The tops of the ellipses are
located on a line with the inclination  . In the modified Cam-Clay model (Burland 1965, 1967) the  

ppeq

Figure 1. Yield surfaces of the SS-model in p-q-plane

where
 is related to the actual stress state and

 is
the equivalent pre-consolidation stress, see Fig. 1.

1
ilu
b fa
m
o
ul

c.cot j

(5)

   

 
 



)
(n

(3)

(4)




ine
re l

p eq

The subscript ur is used to specify that the parameters are related to unloading and reloading. In the
SS-model  and  are used as input parameters to
compute the elastic strains.
For triaxial stress states the yield function of the
SS-model is defined as


hr-C

The parameter  is the modified swelling index

which determines soil behaviour during unloading
and reloading. This behaviour is assumed to be elastic
and is described by Hookes law of elasticity. Eq. (3)
implies the following linear stress dependency of the
tangent stiffness modulus.

   

Mo

 

ca

iti

Cr

For isotropic unloading/reloading situations the elastic volume strain is formulated as




ta
ls

)
S
(n C
e
in

line represents the critical state line, which describes

the stress states at post peak failure. It should be
noted that in the SS-model the MC-criterion with the
strength parameters  and is used to describe the
failure. Both the MC-line and the  -line are given
the same shift of
 away from the origin. This
is illustrated in Fig. 1 and is taken into account in (Eq.
(6)).
The total yield contour shown in Fig. 1 by the bold
lines is the boundary of the elastic area. The MCfailure line is fixed, but the cap (ellipse with

 ) may
increase due to primary compression.

tc

ln t

ec

.
1/e
1

tc

m*

m*
t = tc - t

.
(a)

tc

(b)

Figure 2. Consolidation and creep behaviour in standard Oedometer tests

depends entirely on the amount of the creep strain being accumulated by time. Eq. (10) can then be written
as

The strain rate as derived from Eq. (8) reads

 


  

or inversely

  





(9)

    


For isotropic stress states one finds the same modified

creep index  . Therefore one can include the secondary compression part and combine Eqs. (2) and
(3) to get the total volumetric strain as

 



 


  



 

 

 

  





 





where

pp0

 
 

(10)





ev


 


 








  
  
 (13)






  


to

  

  

or   

(14)

 is very small.

  

(15)

Having derived a expression for  it is now possible

to formulate the differential creep equation.

     
 





  

(16)

where    can be eliminated by means of Eq. (13)

to obtain
 


     






cr
vac

(12)

With respect to  the difference 

So Eq. (14) can be simplified as

  

(17)

where
 is defined as in Eq. (12). Entering Eq. (15)
into Eq. (17) one gets

evccr = (l -k ) ln (ppc/pp0 )
1

(11)

tained. Eq. (13) leads for  

evc = k ln (p/p0 )

l*

Assuming that in conventional testing the load is increased stepwise and each load step is maintained for
a constant period of      , where  is precisely
one day, the so-called IC-line with
 
is then ob-

ln p
e



  

  


Combining Eqs. (10) with (11) one obtains

ppc pp p


 

    

where  is the total volumetric strain due to an increase in mean effective stress from
to
in a time
period of    . The total volumetric strain is divided
into an elastic and a visco-plastic creep part, denoted
by  and  respectively. The visco-plastic part can be
separated into a part during consolidation and a part
after consolidation. This is given by the subscripts
and  . The subscript has also been added to the
elastic strain to indicate that this is also related to consolidation. Fig. 3 clarifies these relations.
One should note that the isotropic consolidation
line (IC-line) is not reached after the end of consolidation, but after some creep has occurred. In fact the
IC-line is the line obtained while applying one load
step per day. This is based on the assumption that consolidation occurs in less than one day.
Eq. (10) is valid for a constant mean effective
stress, but for transient or continuous loading problems it is necessary to formulate a constitutive law
in differential form. Moreover there is still the question of how to express the time  analytically. Therefore the basic idea is adopted that all inelastic strains
are time dependent. Additionally following Bjerrum
(1967) it is supposed that the pre-consolidation stress
p0

 

 



      


e = m ln (tc +t/tc )

   

(18)

Assuming the same yield function as in the SS-model

(Eq. (5)) the strain rate can then be defined as

IC-line
(1-day load step curve)


    
 

Figure 3. Logarithmic relationship between volumetric strain

and mean stress including creep






  





(19)

where



 
 

  



In Tab. 2 the other parameters for the
sub-layers of

BBC are plotted. All parameters were determined according to the detailed subsoil description of Ladd,
Whittle and Legaspi (1994). The chosen ratio between the modified soil parameters is 

  and


 .

(20)



. Hence the SSC-model

and  is defined as   

is an extension of the SS-model that takes creep into
account.

DATA

3 ANALYSIS AND RESULTS

In this paragraph, the results of a back-analysis of
two embankments are presented. Note that for both
applied models the input parameters are always the
same. The only difference is that the modified creep
index 
is not used in the SS-model. Therefore creep
is not taken into account in this model.

SS

Settlements [cm]




20

20

40

40

60

60

20

20

40

40

20

20

Till

Figure 4. Vertical displacements at different depths under the

embankment

DATA
SSC
SS

10
620 Days
0

Elevation [m]




Time [years]

Time [years]

3.1 Boston Trial Embankment

An extension of the Interstate highway I-95 north of
Boston was built in 1965. A portion of the embankment was instrumented with piezometers, settlement
rods and inclinometers. The embankment has a height
of

 with a crest width of   and a footing
width of  . It is founded on a   thick sand-layer,
which has an underlying 
 thick deposit of Boston
Blue Clay (BBC). The BBC layer is divided into

sub-layers with different compressibility parameters
and over-consolidation ratios (). Under the embankment the top peat layer is replaced by fill. The
parameters used for the calculation are given in Tab.
1 for sand, fill and peat respectively. The constitutive
law applied to the sand and fill is the Hardening Soil
model (Brinkgreve and Vermeer 1998). The peat was
computed with the MC-model. The following parameters are the same for all
sub-layers of BBC.




SSC

Fill



 
  
 

-10
-20
-30
-40

Table 1. Soil parameters for sand, fill and peat

sand
fill
peat
18
40
120
18.5
0.5
0.2
1
37
0
1
0.426
0.45

20
40
120
19
0.5
0.2
5
35
0
1
0.398
0.398

-165

-65

-165

-65

-165

Excess Pore Pressures (kPa)

11,8
0,208
0.3
5
25
0
1
0.577
0.577

10
2000 Days
0

Elevation [m]







 


 





resp. 
 



resp.

















-65

-10
-20
-30
-40
-65

-165

-65

-165

-65

-165

Excess Pore Pressures (kPa)

Figure 5. Pore-pressure distribution in different sections

layer

Table 2. Soil parameters for Boston Blue Clay

B1
B2
C1
C2
D
E1
E2



 




 






19
2
15.8
0.522
8.34
1.35

10.4
0.652
4.6 3.07
1.08 0.85

6.3
0.870
2.25 1.77
0.80 0.65

The inclination  of the critical state line is significantly steeper than the MC-failure line to prevent the
overprediction of horizontal deformation. One gets
this inclination by choosing a  -value, which yields
to !  
  . The overprediction of horizontal
displacements is well known in the framework of the
classical critical state mechanics. Moreover the value
for    is chosen to uncouple the elastic strain.
This is done to reduce the magnitude of the horizontal displacements as well.
The high -values (Tab. 2) indicate that creep
will not be so important because about half of the
BBC layer has an -value of at least two, decreasing at the bottom of the layer to a value near one. For
that type of soil the amount of creep will be small in
comparison to the rest of the settlements.
Figs. 4 to 6 show the calculation results and the
measurements. The solid lines indicate the measurements, the dashed lines are the results from the SSCmodel and the dotted lines are the analysis with the
SS-model. In Fig. 4 one can recognize that consolidation is not over after the measurement period of 
days, because the settlement curves still have an inclination. That fact is supported by Fig. 5, one can see
that in the center of the BBC there is still a pore-waterpressure of around

  after  days. The
SSC-model slightly overestimates in the most cases
the vertical displacements. Moreover the calculated
pore-water-pressures are slightly higher then those
measured. The horizontal displacements are overestimated as well. In most cases the SS-model matches
the measurements better, especially for the deep settlements. So it seems that if there are high  values in the soft soils the SSC-model is not so useful.

7.1
1.304
1.44
0.60

E3

17.7
1.5
7.8
1.957
1.25 1.21 1.18
0.57 0.57 0.56

F1

F2

F3

5.9
1.522
1.16 1.14 1.11
0.56 0.56 0.55

ing parameters are for all 9 sub-layers the same.














 
  
 

The other parameters used for the calculations are

given in Tab. 3. All parameters were taken from the
literature (Larsson 1997). The ratio between the modified soil parameters is 

  and 


.
The inclination of the critical state line  is here chosen to match the !  -value correctly, as well.
DATA
SSC
SS

10
620 Days
0

Elevation [m]

-10

Sand
A
B
C

-20

D
E

-30
F
-40
Till

0,0

0,1

0,0

0,1

0,0

0,1

Horizontal Displacements (m)

DATA
SSC
SS

10
2000 Days
0

-10

Elevation [m]

3.2 Ska Edeby test embankment

The test embankment was built on the test site of Ska
Edeby about 
 west of Stockholm in the year
1961. The embankment has a height of
  with a
crest width of   and slopes

. The fill was instrumented with piezometers and settlement markers
at different locations under and outside the fill. The
soil under the embankment consists of soft clay with
a thickness of
  on top of till or rock. The soft
clay layer is divided into  sub-layers with different
compressibility parameters and s. The follow-

Sand
A
B
C

-20

D
E

-30
F
-40
Till

0,0

0,1

0,0

0,1

0,0

0,1

Horizontal Displacements (m)

Figure 6. Horizontal displacements in different sections

layer
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H

Table 3. Soil parameters for Ska Edeby









14.2
14.4

16.1

 







 

 













0.106
0.091
0.083

Den Haan, E. J. (1994). Vertical Compression of Soils. Ph. D.

thesis, Delft University.
Garlanger, J. E. (1972). The consolidation of soils
exhibiting creep under constant effective stress.
Geotechnique 22(1), 7178.
Janbu, N. (1985). 25th rankine lecture: Soil models in offshore engineering. G e otechnique 35(3), 239281.
Ladd, C. C., A. J. Whittle, and D. E. Legaspi (1994). Stressdeformation behaviour of an embankement on boston
blue clay. In Vertical and Horizontal Deformations of
Foundations and Embankments Proceedings of Settlement 94, College Station Texas, pp. 17301759.
Larsson, R. (1997). Consolidation of soft soils. Report 29,
Swedish Geotechnical Institute.
Sekiguchi, H. (1977). Rheological characteristics of clays. In
Proceedings 9th International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, Volume 1, Tokyo,
pp. 289292.
Stolle, D. F. E., P. A. Vermeer, and P. G. Bonnier (1997).
A soft soil model and experiences with two integration
schemes. Numerical Models in Geomechanics, 123128.
Vermeer, P. A. and H. P. Neher (1999). A soft soil model that
accounts for creep. In R. B. J. Brinkgreve (Ed.), Proceedings of the International Symposium Beyond 2000 in
Computational Geotechnics, Amsterdam, pp. 249261.
Balkema.
Vermeer, P. A., D. F. E. Stolle, and P. G. Bonnier (1997). From
classical theory of secondary compression to modern
creep. In J.-X.Yuan (Ed.), Computer Methods and Advances in Geomechanics, Volume 4, Wuhan, pp. 2469
2478. Balkema.

14.1
2
1.2





0.076

1.0

0.069

As shown in Tab. 3 the soft clay is almost normally consolidated ( 
). Only the upper 
have a high  value caused by a crust. Hence, a
large amount of creep is to be expected. Furthermore
it demonstrates that the settlements as well as the
pore-pressures and the horizontal displacements were
strongly underestimated by the SS-model whereas the
results from the SSC-model and the measured data
agree fairly well.
4 CONCLUSIONS
After a brief introduction of the SS-model and the
SSC-model two test embankments were used for
back-analysis. The results show that for overconsolidated soils the SSC-model has no advantages compared to the SS-model, because in such case creep
doesnt play an important role. However in normally
consolidated soft clays like in Ska Edeby creep becomes significant and the SSC-model exceeds the SSmodel. This should be kept in mind when simulating
the construction of any building on soft soils.

DATA
SSC
SS

Time [years]
0,0

5,0

10,0

15,0

20,0

-0,1
-0,3

Settlements [m]

-0,5
-0,7

REFERENCES

-0,9

Adachi, T. and F. Oka (1982). Constitutive equation for normally consolidated clays based on elasto-viscoplasticity.
Soils and Foundations 22, 5770.

-25,0 -20,0 -15,0 -10,0 -5,0

-0,02

0,0

0,02

0,06

0,10

Bjerrum, L. (1967). 7th rankine lecture: Engineering geology of norwegian normally-consolidated marine clays as
related to settlements of buildings. G e otechnique 17(1),
81118.

A
B
-2

-4

-6

-8

-10

Burland, J. B. (1965). The yielding and dilation of clay (correspondence). Geotechnique 15(2), 211214.

-12

Burland, J. B. (1967). Deformation of Soft Clay. Ph. D. thesis,

Cambridge University.

-14

Elevation [m]

Borja, R. I. and E. Kavaznjian (1985). A constitutive

model for the stress-strain-time behaviour of wet clays.
Geotechnique 35(3), 283298.
Brinkgreve, R. B. J. and P. A. Vermeer (Eds.) (1998). PLAXIS
Finite Element Code for Soil and Rock Analyses. Rotterdam: A.A.Balkema.
Buismann, K. (1936). Results of long duration settlement
tests. In Proceedings 1st International Conference on
Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, Volume 1,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp. 103107.

Excess Pore Pressure [kPa]

Butterfield, R. (1979). A natural compression law for

soils (an advance on e-log p)(technical note).
Geotechnique 29(4), 469480.

Horizontal Displacement [m]

Figure 7. Time-Settlement-Curve; Pore-pressure distribution after 10 years and horizontal displacements after 20 years