Seismic plastic deformation in the free-field

An analytical solution for the free-field seismic elastoplastic deformation of granular dry soil is developed. This solution is possible since the stress field solution from pseudostatic analysis is known at any acceleration level. A plastic potential function with two plastic material parameters is suggested to model the soil. This model can describe both the volume dilation and contraction of soil under shearing. Closed-form deformation solutions are derived for two special cases and the results from a numerical evaluation of the solution are compared with those measured from shaking table tests. From the deformation solution the shape of the horizontal plastic displacement distribution with depth is identical to that for the elastic deformation since both depend only on the distribution of the elastic shear modulus.