Constitutive elasto-plastic model for fine soils in the unsaturated to saturated saturation zone

Near saturation, air bubbles and pockets can be trapped in the porous network of soils. The aim of this paper was to present a coupled model that takes into account the effect of this entrapped air on the poro-elasto-plastic behavior of the soil. The model takes into account the physical-mechanical interactions between different phases as well as the kinematics of each constituent (liquid water, dissolved air, gaseous air and solid grains). This new model was implemented in a FEM code. Some numerical simulations were performed to demonstrate its ability to reproduce a continuous transition of unsaturated to saturated states.