UDM Library

Description

• The sand plasticity model PM4Sand was developed for geotechnical earthquake engineering applications by Professors Ross W. Boulanger (homepage) and Katerina Ziotopoulou (homepage) at the University of California at Davis.
• PM4Sand is a stress-ratio controlled, critical state-based, bounding surface plasticity model for sand (and other purely nonplastic granular soils) that has been implemented as a user-defined dynamic link library for use with the program FLAC and FLAC2D by Itasca. The model was developed and implemented to approximate stress-strain responses of specific importance to geotechnical earthquake engineering and liquefaction problems.
• The only change in Version 3.3 relative to Version 3.2 was restricting the stress ratio term to less than or equal to unity in the elastic shear modulus equation. These changes did not significantly affect model responses, but calibrations need to be checked/revised when updating from 3.2 to 3.3.
• The companion model, PM4Silt (homepage), is available for modeling saturated, low-plasticity silts and clays that exhibit stress-history normalized behaviors.

Keywords

• effective stress
• liquefaction
• plastic
• pore pressure
• seismic loading

References

Manual: Boulanger, R. W., and Ziotopoulou, K. (2023). “PM4Sand (Version 3.3): A sand plasticity model for earthquake engineering applications.” Report No. UCD/CGM-23/01, Center for Geotechnical Modeling, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Davis, CA, March, 112 pp. [pdf available here]