ABSTRACT
Soil mechanics is increasingly focusing on understanding the deformation characteristics of soils under small strains. At small strains, soil stiffness is notably high, but its decay with increasing shear strains or stresses is rather fast and nonlinear. Accounting for small strain stiffness is crucial for accurately calculating deformations and minimizing the influence of distant fields in numerical simulations of boundary value problems. This paper offers a comprehensive overview of factors, including state and loading history dependencies, that impact the shear modulus of soils. It introduces an explicit 1D small-strain model, expanding upon Janbu’s stress-dependent stiffness, to incorporate small strain considerations into 1D settlement analysis.
