A basic hypoplastic constitutive model for sand

Hypoplastic constitutive models are based on nonlinear tensor functions and are characterized by simple formulation and few parameters. In its early stage, mainly basic hypoplastic constitutive equations were concerned, where the stress tensor is assumed as the only state variable. There followed some enhanced models based on the basic constitutive equation by including void ratio as an additional state variable. In this paper, we first show that the widely used hypoplastic model by Wolffersdorff is seriously flawed because the underlying basic equation does not perform properly. We proceed to develop a basic hypoplastic constitutive equation by introducing a new tensorial term, which preserves the critical state at large strain. The model performance is demonstrated by parameter study for some element tests. This simple and robust basic equation is well suited to build more sophisticated models.