ABSTRACT
The water content of the upper soil in excavation is greatly influenced by seasonal changes, where hydraulic hysteresis (Kawai et al., 2000; Buisson and Wheeler, 2000; Gallipoli et al., 2003; Wheeler et al., 2003; Tamagnini, 2004; Sheng et al., 2004; Sun et al., 2007) can well reflect this behavior. But its application in excavation has rarely been reported. Here, the deformation and stability of an excavation was analyzed by using a simple constitutive model for unsaturated soils. The effect of hydraulic hysteresis was also considered. The main purpose of this paper is to estimate the difference between the saturated and unsaturated excavations, based on which corresponding treatment can be considered.
