Experimental Assessment of the Stress–Strain Behaviour of Leighton Buzzard Sand for the Calibration of a Constitutive Model

A number of constitutive models are nowadays implemented in numerical codes which simulate the stress–strain behaviour of soil from very small to large strain. In this paper, the mechanical behaviour of Leighton Buzzard sand (grade E), used worldwide for physical modelling, has been thoroughly characterized by laboratory testing along several stress paths. Tests were aimed at calibrating a constitutive model, that allows considering stiffness nonlinearities in a wide range of strains, in the framework of isotropically hardening plasticity. As a validation, the results of dynamic centrifuge tests on a layer of the same sand were compared with finite element predictions.