Coupled elastoplastic damage model for unsaturated rocks

Y. Jia, X.C. Song, G. Duveau & J.F. Shao

LML, UMR CNRS, PolytechLille, France

ABSTRACT: This paper presents an elastoplastic model for unsaturated rocks. A short resume of experimental
investigations is presented in the first part. Based on experimental data and micromechanical considerations,
a general constitutive model for the poromechanical behavior of saturated and unsaturated rocks is presented.
The proposed model is formulated within the thermodynamic framework of porous media and aimed to describe
the main features observed in experimental data, in particular elastic degradation due to microcracks, coupling
between plastic deformation and induced damage, influence of water saturation on plastic flow and damage
evolution. The model is then applied to describe the behavior of an argillite in various conditions. Finally, the
performance of model is examined by comparing numerical simulation with test data.

1 INTRODUCTION is observed. This degradation of elastic properties can

This work has been preformed in the framework of
feasibility study of underground storage of radioactive
wastes coordinated by the French Agence National de
Gestion des Dchets Radioactifs (ANDRA). Thanks
to its good geological properties (without major frac-
tures), very low permeability and high mechanical
strength; the argillite is chosen as one of possible
geometrical barriers. An underground laboratory is
being constructed in the layer of argillite to per-
form in situ thermo-hydromechanical experiments. In
this context, rocks are submitted to various coupled
perturbations such as mechanical loading, hydraulic
flow, desaturation and resaturation, and temperature
variation etc. In such a multidisciplinary research
project, one of the essential tasks is to physically
understand and mathematical describe the mechan-
ical behavior of material in coupled conditions. As
a part of these tasks, the purpose of our work is to
propose a constitutive model for the description of
hydromechanical behavior of argillite in isothermal
condition.
2 SUMMARY OF EXPERIMENTAL DATA
Experimental tests have been conducted on argillite
in various loading conditions. The basic mechanical
behavior of this rock shows two basic phenomena.
First, large residual strains are obtained in all the tests
including the uniaxial test. In connection with micro-
scopic analysis of argillite, such irreversible strains
are essentially related to plastic deformation. Sec-
ondly, a progressive decrease of the elastic stiffness
be considered as a consequence of damage induced
by microcracks. Thus the basic behaviour of mate-
rial can be characterized by important plastic stains,
coupled with an induced damage due to microcracks.
Additionally the plastic behavior is strongly pressure
sensitive and exhibits a transition from volumetric
compressibility to dilatancy.
In order to study the influence of water content
on mechanical behavior of argillite, several groups of
samples were submitted to a constant relative humid-
ity in order to reach desired water saturation degree.
Three different ranges of water saturation degree were
selected. Four triaxial compression tests were real-
ized for each range. The experimental data show
that the macroscopic failure stress decreases and the
argillite become more ductile when the water saturated
degree increase. Moreover, the initial elastic modu-
lus increases with the water saturation degree while
Poissons ratio slightly decreases. As indicated in the
experimental tests, the moisture content has a sig-
nificant influence on the mechanical behavior of the
argillite. The main factor of the dependency is the vari-
ation of capillary pressure during drying and wetting.
Then the proposed model should describe coupled
hydromechanical responses in such specific struc-
tures. An elastoplastic damage model for unsaturated
rocks should be formed.
3 CONSTITUTIVE MODEL
In this section, an elastoplastic damage model is for-
mulated to describe mechanical behavior of saturated
and partially saturated rock. Under the assumption

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Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
of small strains, the following partition rules are
assumed:
3.1 Non-linear poroelastic behavior
The rock is considered as a porous medium composed
of a deformable matrix, and can be saturated by a
compressible liquid (subscript lq) in equilibrium with
its vapor (subscript vp).The vapor forms an ideal gas
mixture (subscript gz) with the dry air (subscript da).
Darcys law and Ficks law are respectively used for
the conduction of liquid and the diffusion of the
vapor in the gas mixture. The present study is limited
to isothermal conditions. Three general conservation
equations concern respectively: the momentum of the
multiphase medium, the dry air mass and the water
species mass (liquid and vapor). Before describing the
plastic deformation and damage evolution, the poro-
elastic behavior of partially saturated media should be
defined. The non-linear isotropic poroelastic consti-
tutive equation for partially saturated media (Coussy
1995, Coussy et al. 1998) can be written incrementally
as (, = lq, vp, da, summation on ):
where m , sij , eij , v , pi , mi , i denote, respectively, the
mean stress, the deviatoric stress tensor, the deviatoric
strain tensor, the volumetric strain, the partial pres-
sure, the fluid mass variation and the volumetric mass
of the ith fluid phase. K0 and K are the drained and
undrained bulk moduli.G is the shear modulus. bi is
the Biots coefficient related to the fluid phase i. Mij
represent the Biot moduli between the fluid phase i and
j. By inverting equation (3), the fluid mass variations
can be expressed in terms of elastic strains and partial
pressures:
where Nij are the dual coefficients to the Biot mod-
uli Mij . In the general case, the poroelastic parameters
bi , (or Mij ) are functions of partial pressures, tempera-
ture and elastic strains. For elastoplastic materials with
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Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
induced damage, these parameters are further func-
tions of plastic deformations and damage variable. In
the case of porous media saturated by three fluid phase
(liquid water, vapour and dry air), Biot coefficients bi
and Nij are functions of the liquid saturation degree Slq ,
the derivative of water retention curve, the volumet-
ric compressibility of constituents, and the porosity of
the porous media. Suitable experimental tests should
be performed for the determination of these parame-
ters. Due to thermodynamic equilibrium between the
liquid water and its vapour, the vapour pressure can
be related to the liquid pressure by using the Kelvins
relation:
where p0vp and p0lq are reference pressures for the vapor
and the liquid, respectively, in thermodynamic equi-
ol
librium. Mvp , R and T are the molar mass of vapor, the
universal gas constant and the absolute temperature.
In the ideal gas mixture, the total gas pressure ver-
ifies pgz = pvp + pda . Therefore, the gas pressure and
the liquid pressure can be used as two independent state
variables of partially saturated media. The constitutive
equations (1a) can be written as follows:
where b is the intrinsic Biots coefficient. These equa-
tions can also be expressed in terms of the capillary
pressure, defined as pcp = pgz plq :
By comparing the non-linear poroelastic theory with
the classical Biots model for saturated medium, it is
possible to extend the concept of effective stress tensor
to poroelastic behavior of partially saturated media.
3.2 Poroplastic behavior
Like most rocks, the plastic deformation depends on
pore pressures (gas and liquid) in saturated and par-
tially saturated condition. These pressure should be
considered as independent forces, like stress tensor, in
the formulation of yield function and plastic poten-
tial. However, by taking a similar way to saturated
porous media, the stress equivalence principle pro-
vides a useful way to extend plastic models for dry
materials to partially saturated materials. In this prin-
ciple, a suitable effective stress tensor is defined for
the formulation of plastic functions. Various forms of
such a effective stress tensor may be proposed. From
the theoretical point of view, the existence and valid-
ity of effective stresses is still an open topic for the
plastic modeling of saturated and partially saturated
porous media (Schrefler and Gawin 1996; Lydzba and
Shao 2000). In this model, an effective stress ten-
sor is defined for partially saturated media from the
extension of the classic Terzaghi effective stress for
saturated media:
Further, argillite is a friction cohesion material. In
this work, we put the emphasis on the poromechanical
behavior and plastic damage coupling. The description
of plastic behavior is simplified and only the major fea-
tures are taken into account. The material is weakened
by a set of microcracks. The damage induces the redis-
tribution of stresses inside intact material bounds. The
plastic deformation is then coupled with the damage
evolution. Using the framework of continuum dam-
age mechanics, the conception of effective stress for
damaged materials is used to describe this coupling.
In isotopic case, the effective stress for non saturated
damaged rocks is defined by:
where H (v ) is the Heaviside function. This function
is introduced to account for unilateral effect due to
closure of microcracks. We notice that the initial bulk
modulus is entirely recovered after closure of micro-
cracks while the shear module remains damaged. Two
parameters and characterize degradation of elastic
properties due to damage. On the basis of experimental
data from argillites and adaptation of the plastic model
proposed by Pietruszczak et al. (1998) for concrete, the
yield surface is described by the following non-linear
function:
where q being the deviatoric stress, p the effective
mean stress of damaged material and the Lodes
angle. The function g() defines the dependency of
plastic yield on the third stress invariant. Its partic-
ular form can be identified from experimental yield
Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
locus on the deviatoric plane. Various forms are avail-
able in literature (see for example Van Eekelen 1980).
However, for the reason of simplicity, we have taken
g() = 1.Rc is the uniaxial compression strength of
material. The parameter Cs denotes the coefficient of
cohesion of material.
The plastic strain hardening is presented by the
increasing function p of the generalized plastic distor-
tion p . According to the experimental data obtained
on the argillite (Chiarelli, 2000), the following form is
used:
where B is a parameter controlling the rate of plas-
tic hardening. The hardening function p varies from
0 to 1. The function p is introduced to describe
strong pressure sensitivity of argillite, which is con-
trolled by the parameter 1 . For most geomaterials
under compressive stresses, a non-associated plastic
flow rule should be used in order to correctly capture
the transition from plastic compressibility to dilatancy.
According to the previous work by Pietruszczak et al.
(1998), the following logarithmic function is used as
plastic potential:
The variable P 0 defines the intersection point between
The compressibil-
the potential locus and axis P.
ity/dilatancy transition occurs on the locus where
g
P
= 0. For the sake of simplicity, a linear function
is used:
The constant gives the slope of transition locus.
The plastic flow rule is given by:
The loading-unloading condition is defined by:
3.3 Damage characterization
Like most geomaterials, induced damage is gen-
erally anisotropic due to oriented distribution of
microcracks. However, for the sake of simplicity, we
assume an isotropic distribution of microcracks for
the argillite. The scale damage variable is then related
499
to the microcrack density defined by d = Na3 / 60
3-1(MPa)
where  being the representative volume element
failure surface
(RVE), N the number of cracks in each orientation 50
and a the radius of penny shaped cracks. The charac-
terization of damage evolution is based on the damage 40
model proposed by Mazars (1984). Moreover, the con-
tribution of plastic deformation to damage evolution C/D transition line
should be taken into account. It is assumed that the 30
damage evolution depends on both elastic strain and
plastic strain. The damage criterion is then expressed 20
as follows:
10
-m(MPa)
0
-10 0 10 20 30 40 50

Figure 1. Illustration of failure surface and compress-

ibility/dilatancy line for argillite during drained triaxial
compression tests.

Table 1. Representative values of parameters for the

argillite.

Elastic parameter Plastic parameter Damage parameter

where D is defined as the driving force for damage
evolution. D0 is the initial damage threshold. A1 and E = 7400 MPa Rc = 25.5MPa A1 = 0.97
= 0.17 A = 3.25 B1 = 2.0
B1 control the damage evolution rate. The function d
Cs = 0.1 D0 = 1.0E 4
is introduced to account for the pressure dependency B = 7.0E 4 2 = 1.0
of damage. In the case of non-viscous dissipation, = 1.3 = 1.0
the damage evolution law is derived from the damage = 1.0 = 1.0
criterion:

elastic constants are determined from the linear part

The loading unloading condition for damage is given
by the so called Kuhn-Tucker relations:
By using the plastic flow rule, the damage evolution
law and the constitutive equations for dry materials,
the drained tangent elastic stiffness tensor of damaged
material can be determined.
4 PARAMETERS IDENTIFICATION
The proposed model contains 14 parameters: two
elastic parameters for intact material (E, ), six
parameters for characterization of plastic behavior
(A, Rc , Cs , B, , 1 ), and six parameters for damage
characterization (A1 , B1 , d0 , 2 , , ). All the para-
meters of model can be identified from a series of
triaxial compression tests with different confining
pressures and uniaxial compression test. The initial
of stressstrain curves of the first loading-unloading
cycle. For most rocks, the elastic parameters vary with
the confining pressure and the water saturation degree.
The variation is not detailed here because the emphasis
is put on the plasticity and damage. The parameterRc is
identified by the peak stress in the stressstrain curve
of uniaxial compression test. The two parameters
(A, Cs ) characterizing the failure surface are fitted
from peak stresses obtained in triaxial compression
tests. The plastic hardening parameterBcan be iden-
tified by drawing p versus the generalized plastic
shear stain p . By identifying the stress point where
the plastic volumetric strain rate is close to zero on
stressstrain curves, the parameter is obtained. Base
on the experimental data, the threshold of damage d0 is
fitted as the initial value of equivalent strain D when
the damage occurs in the material. In order to deter-
mine the parameter A1 and B1 , the evolution of damage
according to equivalent strain D is necessary.A simple
compression test can be used to identify this evo-
lution. The corresponding compressibility dilatancy
transition line and failure surface are illustrated in
Figure 1.
In Table 1, the representative values of model are
presented for the argillite in saturated condition.

500
Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
 45 13(Pa) 30 3(MPa)

30 20

Pc = 5MPa 10
15

3(%) 1(%)
3(%) 1(%) 0
0 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6
-1.5 -0.5 0.5 1.5 2.5
Figure 3. Simulation of lateral extension test with an initial
Figure 2a. Simulation of triaxial compression test with confining pressure of 30 MPa.
confining pressure of 5 MPa.
160 1(Pa)
60 13(Pa)

120

40
80

K = 2.2
Pc = 10MPa 40
20

3(%)
0
-2 -1 0 1
Figure 2b. Simulation of triaxial compression test with
confining pressure of 10 MPa.
5 NUMERICAL SIMULATION
Argillite samples were drilled from three different
depths in the site of the underground laboratory con-
ducted by ANDRA in the Eastern France (Chiarelli
2000). However, the differences of the mechanical
behaviors between different depths are qualitatively
similar with only small quantitative scatters. There-
fore, the experimental data from the three depths are
superposed here to represent the averaged data of
the argillite. The differences between three depths are
considered as inside the natural uncertainty of exper-
imental data. According to the water continent in situ
and the porosity estimation, the argillite samples can
be seen as saturated in the initial condition (ANDRA
1998). A series of triaxial compression tests have
been performed on the samples with natural saturation
(Chiarelli 2000). The obtained data have been used for
the determination of parameters of the model. By using
the parameters given in Table 1, simulations of triaxial
compression tests are performed. Comparisons with
3(%) 1(%)
0
1(%) -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
2 3 Figure 4. Simulation of a proportional compression test
with a stress ration K = 2.2.
experimental data are shown in Figure 2a and 2b for
two different confining pressures.
There is a good agreement between the numerical
simulations and the experimental data. As the triax-
ial compression tests have been used to determine
the models parameters, this comparison represents the
verification of the consistency of the parameters.
In Figure 3, a lateral extension test is simulated.
In this test, the sample is first submitted to a hydro-
static stress state, the lateral stress is then decreased
by keep the axial stress constant. We can notice a
quite good agreement between numerical simulation
and experimental test.
A proportional loading test is presented in Fig-
ure 4. In this test, the axial stress and lateral stress
are simultaneously increased with a constant ration
(k = 1 /3 ) Again the simulation is in accordance with
the experimental data. The proposed model is capable
to correctly describe the basic mechanical behavior of
material.
In order to study the influence of water satura-
tion degree on the mechanical behavior of argillites,
three triaxial compression tests with different water

501
Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
 45 (Pa) water saturation degree decreases. However, the mate-
1 3
rial strength becomes more brittle in nature. There is
Slq = 60%
also a good qualitatively agreement between simula-
Slq = 77% tions and experiment data. In a word, the capillary
30 effect on mechanical behavior of argillites seems to
Slq = 100% be correctly described. There are scatters between the
data and simulations, but they can be easily reduced
by using improved description of capillary effects form
15 more completed test data.
Pc = 2MPa

3(%) 1(%)
6 CONCLUSIONS
0
-1 0 1 2 3
A new coupled elastoplastic model is proposed for
Figure 5a. Simulation of a triaxial compression test modeling of poromechanical behavior of partially
(Pc = 2 MPa) with different water saturation degree. saturated rocks. Comparisons between numerical sim-
ulations and test data have been presented for var-
50 ious loading paths in saturated and partially satu-
1 3(Pa)
rated conditions. The model is capable to describe
Slq = 607% main responses of non saturated rocks, for example,
40
Slq = 77% elastoplastic deformation, pressure sensitivity, plastic
compressibility and dilatancy, degradation of elas-
30 Slq = 100% tic properties and the capillary effect. The proposed
model will be extended to involve thermal effects.
20 Some specific in-situ thermo-hydromechanical exper-
iments are expected in the underground research
Pc = 5MPa
laboratory by ANDRA. The proposed model will be
10
checked against the data obtained from these experi-
3(%) 1(%) ments and some improvement can be then performed.
0
-1.5 -0.5 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5

Figure 5b. Simulation of a triaxial compression test REFERENCES

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