Elasto‐plastic modelling of stress‐path‐dependent behaviour of interfaces

A single-surface elasto-plastic model developed by Desai and his coworkers is used to predict the behaviour of an interface between sand and a steel plate. The loading in the experiments and in their predictions followed various stress and displacement paths. The results of predictions of the two- and three-dimensional behaviour of the interface under both constant normal stress and constant normal stiffness conditions are presented. The predictions are compared with their corresponding experimental results. The model parameters were determined on the basis of 2-D conventional experiments under the condition of constant normal stress and they were used in the prediction of the interface behaviour in various stress paths. There is, in general, a good agreement between the predicted and experimental results. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.