An elastoplastic solution to undrained expansion of a cylindrical cavity in SANICLAY under plane stress condition

Abstract Although cylindrical cavity expansion under plane stress condition is commonly encountered in geotechnical problems, most currently available solutions have been developed for cavity expansion under plane strain condition. This paper develops a novel elastoplastic solution for undrained expansion of a cylindrical cavity in SANICLAY under plane stress condition. The SANICLAY model, which could well represent the mechanical behaviour of the anisotropic soil and overconsolidated soil, is employed in the present solution to model the responses of the soil around the expanded cavity. The problem is formulated as a system of first-order differential equations with the unknown variables as the functions of an auxiliary coordinate, which are solved as an initial value problem. The expansion responses under plane stress condition are comprehensively compared with those under plane stress condition to highlight the unique expansion responses under plane stress condition. The results show that the present solution could well reflect the unique expansion responses under plane stress condition, which are totally different from those under plane strain condition. It is expected the proposed solution could provide a reasonable approach to interpret the pressuremeter test and model pile installation effects near the surface of the natural anisotropic clays.