Directional plasticity of clay showing instability

A graphical approach is used to sketch the field of small plastic strains (e < 0.1 %) of Pisa clay along different axi-symmetric stress paths associated to a partial confining stress reduction. Within the classic framework of elasto-plasticity, volumetric and deviatoric plastic strains contours are determined from data obtained from triaxial tests, assuming a cross-anisotropic hypo-elastic formulation calibrated on a wide set of tests and with non linear evolution of the elastic moduli calibrated along a quasi-1D swelling stress path. The evolutions of the plastic strains and of the plastic strain vectors are shown along the stress path directly explored with tests and along virtual paths interpolated from the actual data along intermediate directions at various strain levels