A smoothed cap model for variably saturated soils and its robust numerical implementation

Summary This paper deals with the numerical implementation of a cap model for unsaturated soils. It provides a brief review of existing cap model approaches, based on which an improved model formulated in terms of generalised effective stress and matric suction is derived and described in detail. Although the proposed model is a multisurface plasticity model, it can efficiently be implemented using only single‐surface projections because of the smoothness of the model, which is obtained by construction. Numerical algorithms are provided for these single‐surface stress projections, using a single‐equation approach whenever possible. The robustness of the utilised single‐equation approaches is enhanced by proposing problem‐fitted start‐up procedures based on investigations of the nonlinear projection equations. A comparison of the model response with extensive material test data is used to validate the model and to demonstrate the robust application of the approach to silty sands and low to medium plasticity clays. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.