On elastoplastic damage modelling in unsaturated geomaterials

In the context of nuclear waste disposal, the modelling of the behaviour of host rocks and soils still needs improvement. Unsaturated porous geomaterials exhibit particular behaviour when exposed to suction. Their non-linear behaviour may result from two different processes, plasticity which induces irreversible strains and damage which causes a deterioration of their elastic properties. Many elasto-plastic models are now available for unsaturated soils, most of them based on the Barcelona Basic Model (Alonso et al., 1990). They take into consideration a certain number of issues linked with the nature of unsatured soils. Models coupling damage and plasticity have also been proposed for continuous media. Since very few works have attempted to connect these two distinct fields, unsaturated soil mechanics and continuum damage mechanics, this work focuses on the main issues related to the development of a model coupling elasto-plasticity and damage for unsaturated porous media.