A graphical solution for undrained cylindrical cavity expansion in strain-hardening frictional soil

This paper attempts to expand the graphical analysis concept proposed by Chen and Abousleiman (Géotechnique, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1680/jgeot.21.00172 ) to deduce the undrained expansion solution of a cylindrical cavity in shear strain-hardening Drucker–Prager frictional soil. Based on the geometrical representation of the stress state/path and strain increments in the deviatoric planes, it is shown that the deviatoric stress-Lode angle stress path can be desirably determined by solving a first-order differential equation for the stress ratio (deviatoric stress over mean effective stress) in term of the Lode angle. The essential cavity expansion curve may also be readily constructed by calculating the internal cavity pressure and the corresponding expanded cavity radius, respectively, through simple numerical integrations with respect to the same variable of stress ratio. In particular, the ultimate cavity pressure can be easily evaluated by directly integrating the expression for cavity pressure with the stress ratio up to its limiting value. Some numerical results obtained from the proposed graphical method are presented to illustrate the impacts on the cavity responses of the earth pressure coefficient at rest, K_0 , and the key plasticity hardening parameters, which have also been compared with alternative solutions that require dealing with a system of coupled differential equations involving three principal effective stress components.