ABSTRACT
In the current state of practice for the design of geotechnical projects, the extensive reliance on empirical correlations to obtain design parameters sometimes fails to capture realistic soil behaviour, and in other cases produces severely conservative design parameters. Proper calibration of numerical models with appropriately applied soil constitutive models is essential to obtaining reasonable numerical predictions of the performance of projects. This paper aims to provide some insights on the calibration process of advanced soil constitutive models for use in numerical analyses, in particular the Hardening Soil model, by proposing a sequential approach of calibration with the use of triaxial tests, oedometer tests and the pressuremeter test. Modelling techniques for the simulation of the pressuremeter test are briefly discussed, followed by some investigation into the influence of boundary conditions, loading conditions and the effects of borehole disturbance.
