A new isotropic hyper-elasticity model for enhancing the rate of convergence of Mohr-Coulomb-like constitutive models and application to shallow foundations and trapdoors

A new hyper-elastic formulation is proposed for improving the convergence of Mohr–Coulomb-like constitutive models at small stresses, when problems come from vicinity to apex yield surface and elastic predictor can lay in a region which not defined. The avoids stress states with tensile mean pressures provides shear bulk stiffnesses increasing square root stress, as typically occurs granular soil. model applied two typical engineering problems: centred-loaded, superficial foundation active passive trapdoor problem. numerical results are compared upper lower bound solutions, showing reliability FEM results. In addition, analyses highlight some peculiar aspects soil-foundation interaction usually neglected current practice design.