ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the modeling of soil compaction through two examples. The first one consists in using the Barcelona Basic Model (BBM) to analyze compaction from a mechanistic point of view. Then, the second example uses a methodology to link the soil’s density with its grain size distribution. The BBM is an elastoplastic model developed for unsaturated soils. During compaction, density grows as the number of loading cycles increases. The water retention curve of a soil evolves during compaction because the sizes of the pores change. Several models have been proposed to describe the evolution of the water retention curve for soils undergoing compaction. The most straightforward case of granular mixtures occurs when the mixture has only two classes of grain sizes, also known as binary mixtures. This case is unrealistic for granular materials. The virtual compacity is unreachable by using either laboratory or field techniques.
