The phenomenon of hysteresis during wetting-drying cycles can be
simulated by the porous-solid model developed in chapter 3. This model employs the
current pore-size distribution of the material. The term “current pore-size distribution”
means that the size of pores can be updated as the soil deforms. In that sense, the
porous-solid can be used advantageously for the development of fully coupled hydromechanical
constitutive models as the influence of the volumetric deformation on the
retention curves and effective stresses can be easily assessed. This is done by including
some experimental observations related to the behavior of the pore size distribution of
soils subjected to loading or suction increase. This methodology avoids using any
additional parameter or calibration procedure for the hydro-mechanical coupling of
unsaturated soils.
Keywords: Effective stresses, Evolution of pore size distribution, Hydromechanical
coupling, Hysteresis, Loading, Macropores, Mean size of pores, Pore
size distribution, Porous-solid model, Soil-water retention curves, Suction
increase, Unsaturated soils, Volumetric reduction, Volumetric strain.