Modelling the undrained response of fibre reinforced sands

Mixing a loose clean sand with random discrete flexible fibres has been found beneficial in decreasing the susceptibility to the phenomenon of liquefaction under monotonic loading. The addition of fibres can convert the strain softening response, typical of a loose unreinforced sand, into a strain hardening response by affecting the pore pressure generation and the effective stress path response. A new constitutive model based on the rule of mixtures has been used to simulate the undrained response of fibre reinforced sands. The model superimposes the individual contributions of the sand and the fibres according to their volumetric fraction. An apparent densification of the sand matrix induced by the presence of the fibres is accounted for in the model by assigning some of the void space to the fibres. This apparent densification is considered responsible for the observed strain hardening behaviour of reinforced sands. The proposed model is able to accommodate any distribution of fibre orientation: the orientation of fibres plays a key role in explaining the experimentally observed effective stress paths.