Ricerc@Sapienza

This research proposal is focused on soil anisotropy. It encompasses different scales, from the soil element to typical of engineering boundary value problems, and is aimed to shed some light on this crucial aspect of soil mechanics. The key ingredients of soil anisotropy will be first highlighted based on experimental observations; the following step will be focused on the continuum mechanics-based constitutive modelling of such features, leading to the final stage of the activity, which will be devoted to the evaluation of the potential impact of anisotropy on the solution of relevant boundary value problems, as numerically analysed in Finite Element simulations.
The proponents will work on this rather fundamental aspect of the mechanics of soil, trying not to miss the final objective of providing useful tools to be adopted in engineering practice.
In detail, the scientific question at the base of the proposal concerns the link between elastic anisotropy and what occurs at the microscale as an effect of by irreversible strains. This issue will be investigated from a theoretical perspective in light of a new unifying framework, in which both reversible and irreversible anisotropic pattern of soil behaviour can be accounted for through the use of a single fabric tensor. Its engineering impact will be examined with reference to two challenging engineering problems, namely the prediction of settlements induced by the excavation of shallow tunnels in urban areas and the propagation of shear waves within anisotropic soil deposits in seismic prone sites.