ABSTRACT
The “hardening soil model” (HSM) is a very recognized constitutive model and has been proved to produce reasonable accurate results when applied to different geotechnical problems. The model incorporates in its formulation different aspects related to the complex non-linear behavior of soils, such as dependency of elastic modulus on the confined pressure, hyperbolic elastic behavior, two yield surfaces with non-associated, and associated plasticity and friction and dilatancy angles of the material. In this article the HSM is implemented based on a new plastic potential and the Matsuoka-Nakai failure criterion as proposed by Benz (Benz, 2007). The numerical implementation is performed through a user subroutine, and some minor modifications were performed to the original model. The results obtained are compared to those produced by Plaxis. A very good agreement between the models was found. Finally, the numerical implementation was used to model a boundary value problem of a spread footing.
