Nonlinear mechanical behaviour of cemented soils

This paper investigates the nonlinear mechanical behaviour of cemented soils and cement-based grouted soils viewed as multiphase materials. A secant linearization procedure has been coupled to the Homogenization of Periodic Media in order to determine the macroscopic behaviour of such structured soils from the knowledge of the individual constituents’ behaviour and a detailed description of the microstructure. The proposed approach allows to overcome mesh-dependency and divergence problems encountered by direct methods in presence of softening laws. Isotropic elastic damage behaviour is retained for the cement matrix, on the basis of existing triaxial tests. The confrontation with experimental triaxial tests on grouted soils has led us to introduce frictional aspects, which has allowed to improve the model in terms of peak stress and dilation characteristics.